Mae Paner, PNoy and the politics of performance

And we thought Daang Matuwid is an objective reality, a non-negotiable standard, an impersonal rubric that has to be pursued regardless of who may be its friends and its enemies.

 

And yet, when Mae Paner, a.k.a. Juana Change, took it to heart and began criticizing a government that has gone astray from what she thought was Daang Matuwid, the President declared her as just one of his irrational critics out to diminish his noble mission of bringing all of us to the Promised Land. She became an enemy.

Thus, it became crystal clear that for Benigno Simeon Aquino III, a.k.a. PNoy, Daang Matuwid is only for friends. And Juana Change, just like the rest of us his critics, would never be a part of it. In his perspective, PNoy has condemned all of those who do not agree with him to the dustbins of his own version of history.

 

PNoy is not really serious, or is he?

 

Well, I have news for PNoy. Of all the personalities whom he has declared as enemies, from Gloria to Renato Corona to the triumvirate Enrile, Jinggoy and Bong, to the Supreme Court justices and the many others that earned his ire, he has found his match in Juana Change.

 

The reason I say so is because politics in this country has become a performance, and PNoy may be a political performer himself, but he is no match to a dedicated performance activist that is Mae Paner a.k.a. Juana Change.    

 

PNoy rose to power, from being a non-performing asset of the legislature to become President on account of politics that has become a political theater.  

 

The script of his political career is simply based on luck and fortune, and not on talent and virtue. Historical conjunctures have made him an accidental President. What could be more accidental than having a political pedigree that rests on the magic of a surname that rescued him from the ignominy of a lackluster performance in public service? He has not authored a single major bill that became a law, something which Senator Lito Lapid, a much-derided and belittled actor-turned-senator, has at least one. 

 

He is such a lucky man to have a father who was persecuted by a dictator, died and was buried, and whose political capital was resurrected through the election of his mother as President. Such luck had a second coming, when his mother, a much revered democracy icon, died at a time that the country was suffering from the tantrums of Gloria, and was buried just in time when the political landscape was searching for another hero.  

 

The political theater that became the stage for a resurrection of a second Aquino to become President is not unlike the first one. Both were conjunctures brought about by televised funeral marches, of deaths of icons seen as heroes celebrated in the face of despotic images of the incumbent Presidents at each time—Marcos for the first Aquino the mother, and Gloria for the second Aquino the son. Both were products of scripts that only fate could have perfected, worthy of a political accident where the requirement of experience in politics yielded first to the image of a grieving widow, and where a compelling record as a prerequisite to be in public service bowed later to a grieving son.  

 

And in both instances, politics became a stage where symbols collided with, and then absorbed, reality. They happened in moments when images and representations became the lynchpins that directed political narratives. EDSA became a stage for the coming together of these symbolisms for the first Aquino presidency. It was kin to the parting of the Red Sea in a Cecille B. De Mille production—awe-inspiring, compelling. It swamped any resistance to the imaging of Cory as a saint, to a point that it became the dominant narrative, effectively relegating the once powerful and mighty Marcos mythology to become a minority discourse.

 

After EDSA, politics has never been the same again.

 

Celebrities came to populate politics, even as politics ended up being celebrated as a performance, not of the “performance of duty” kind, but of the showbiz kind.

 

This is the kind of politics that propelled PNoy to power. A politics that is not based on the reality of excellence, but on the representation of goodness, something that is not even warranted by what is objectively established, but simply on the narrative of what is being purveyed by the popular media. It is the era where scripted politics rule supreme, where the fiction of virtue is taken as biblical truth by those who are hoping for redemption from misery caused by poverty and corruption. To a viewing public whose significant part of their ordinary lives is spent mostly watching soap operas and game shows on TV, it was easy to believe a mythology, and to perceive illusion as reality.

 

PNoy is a good man, so they say, not because of anything else, but simply because of his parents. He is a principled man, not because of any actual manifestation of such, but simply because he is the son of Ninoy and Cory. He is perceived, not experienced. He is believed and trusted not because of anything else but because of faith on a representation, and not on a reality. 

 

He has become an idol in the same way that people idolized Fernando Poe Jr. People idolized the FPJ they saw in movies, even if they did not have any idea of who the real FPJ was. Likewise, people idolized the PNoy they saw painted by his PR handlers and apologists. This image of PNoy is totally different from what we have as evidence, a career in politics not worthy of any reelection if one has to base judgment objectively on his performance of his duty as an elected legislator.

 

PNoy became a star idolized by citizens who have become his supporters and fans in a post-modern world where politics has become a simulation of the real. It is a world where politicians perform no longer in the sphere of legislation and public service alone, but in the theater of public imagination. This is precisely why there are just too many actors and celebrities who find a natural home in politics. It is also because of this that traditional politicians have to now become performers and entertainers too. 

 

Thus, you see Senator Miriam Santiago dramatically announcing her illness, and then at the right moment declaring that she is cured, and is now entertaining the thought of running for President. Earlier, we saw the trying hard Mar Roxas taking on a variety of roles, from a pier kargador, to a carpenter, to a traffic enforcer. While Chiz Escudero is busy romancing Heart Evangelista, we have Jun Abaya, fully protected from the harmful rays of the sun by an umbrella-carrying aide one can mistake for a production assistant, riding the MRT. Days after, Senator Grace Poe took the MRT challenge herself, this time trying to be more authentic than Jun Abaya.

 

This is now the world of performance politics.

 

And it is a world that is the natural home of Mae Paner, the performance activist.  

 

Her Juana Change took on corruption not in the seriousness of an ideological speech but on the simplicity of a parody and satire. She elicited laughter, even as she drove home the powerful message that other street activists take a lot of effort to put in banners, placards and effigies but only those who are their comrades in ideology would appreciate.

 

Mae Paner and other performance activists like her are the secret weapons of the struggle against corruption and towards good governance. The reason I say so is because in the cultural constructs of our people, ideology is no longer seen as something that is grand, but lies in the everyday and the ordinary. And in the everyday and ordinary, parody and laughter find a home and become effective ways by which we strike back at those who dare oppress us.

 

Mikhail Bakhtin celebrated the discourse of the carnival as a political space for creative resistance, where clowns could make fun of the oppressive king without fear of losing their heads to the guillotine. It is in this space of laughter and parody that we have likewise subjected our corrupt leaders to a dose of our own hilarious revenge. Marcos was reduced to a caricature, even as Gloria became a mere ringtone.  

 

Our culture is particularly adaptive to this kind of political behavior, considering our creative sense of humor, and our ability to convert our tragedies into comedies. We have the wherewithal to celebrate the politics of parody that can effectively neutralize the air of omnipotence of someone who thinks he is the messiah. We can reduce the ambition and expose the deception of a flawed politician not through the power of a coup but through the spiel of a comedian and the raucous laughter elicited by an internet meme, for indeed the best revenge we can exact on someone who desires so much power is to turn him or her into a bad joke.

 

And this is a discourse to which ordinary people can relate.  

 

This is precisely why performance politics has become an easy and comfortable modality for politicians, since it is something that ordinary people appreciate. Miriam’s pick-up lines were a hit, even as people are entertained when political bombs explode during congressional investigations. We watch all of our political events through the lens of a soap opera, with a healthy dose of political satire. It is even surprising that we have not yet mainstreamed in our local TV programming the genre of talk shows that abound in the US where host celebrity comedians roast public figures, even if in many comedy bars, the spiel of some hosts have now taken on a political meaning when they make fun of political personalities.

 

This is the world of Juana Change. This is the turf of Mae Paner, the performance activist who created her.

 

When PNoy declared Mae Paner as an enemy, it was on the basis of her truthful parodies of what he has become. To his mind, it is Mae who abandoned Daang Matuwid. He was hurt by what he perceived as her betrayal of his trust.  

 

But to Mae, and for many others who agree with her, it is the President who has betrayed those who placed so much trust in him.  

 

In this battle, PNoy may have the weapon of authority and the mantle of his Presidential seal.  He may still have the support of his loyal fans a.k.a. supporters. But he now performs in the stage of a political theater, lest we forget this. He is a product of a well-orchestrated performance politics, notably visible of which was his campaign MTV with Dingdong and Marian prominently featured. His presidency is the outcome of one of the finest examples of stage-managed representations, things that were necessary to re-cast his two-bit performance as congressman and senator into one that can excite people and make them believe that he is the hero that FPJ failed to become in real life.

 

He has his own cadre of apologists in showbiz, notably led by his sister Kris, and Boy Abunda. He lives in the same world of Juana Change, but he is not a natural there, for he is simply a creation of a script. And his creators are no match to a Mae Paner whose only goal is to make sure that politics serve its purpose of serving the people.

 

And there is evidence that the scriptwriters stage-managing his political performance are now running out of ideas. Everytime I see him on TV, I am now convinced that the authentic PNoy has been revealed, and what we see is a rambling, lost man. We are now witnessing the beginning of a season-ender of his presidency that has become a political soap opera. There was a hint from his camp to somewhat extend the political soap, just like what is happening to the seemingly endless “Please Be Careful With my Heart,” but his ratings are so bad that such idea was somewhat dropped as quickly as it was raised.

 

And he is now in a weakened position. He becomes vulnerable from those who will use the weapon of ordinary laughter and of political parody. He is a natural target.  

 

And this is what would make performance activists like Mae Paner more threatening to PNoy. In fact, performance activists are more dangerous than those activists who burn effigies, or even those retired generals and political has-beens who plot coups. It is because it is easy to dismiss and underestimate the power of laughter, parody and satire, when in fact they can more effectively resonate with a people who are sick and tired of corruption, ineptitude and hubris but have no cultural predisposition for violence.

 

PNoy versus Mae Paner—it is going to be a fight between a President and a performance activist in a world where politics has become a performance. And in this battle, the one who can elicit the most laughter would win.

The author is a former dean of De La Salle University. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of this website.