The latest storm to hit cyberspace involves Jimmy Sieczka, an American citizen who has been living and working in Cebu City in the last three and half years. Sieczka, with the help of his friends, made a video entitled “20 Reasons Why I Dislike the Philippines” allegedly because he wanted to effect some changes in this country through unconventional ways.
Okay. I have nothing against foreigner guests who try to help the country. I know quite a number who do so—some of them in grand ways, others in quiet and simple ways. But I have reservations about the wisdom of a foreigner’s decision to help the country by producing a video that ridicules Filipinos and disses many things about the supposed defects of our culture.
The issue is not artistic freedom; it’s simply about propriety, and ultimately, of sincerity. For the life of me, I just can’t imagine why someone who has been the recipient of hospitality would express gratefulness and good intentions by camouflaging it as satire. If you want to help, by all means help; why complicate it with artistic conditions? I can only think of one reason why someone would go that far—he must think we are fair game, sitting ducks in a gallery. Would he even consider doing a similar video if he were, say, in Saudi Arabia, or Afghanistan, or even Egypt? He must think that he can get away with it because, what the heck, he has already produced a previous video entitled “20 reasons why I love the Philippines” and is therefore entitled to stretch the limits of his creativity, darn the consequences.
Sieczka’s video is a hodgepodge of diatribes: Open manholes haphazardly covered by drums, terrorists such as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, Filipino transvestites, street peddlers who sell drugs for erectile dysfunction, unsanitary conditions in public markets, uncomfortable comfort rooms, men who piss in public, unfinished buildings, littering, smog, fighting cocks who crow in the middle of the day, idle security guards, frisking, abuse of car horns, drivers who do not obey traffic rules, our obsession with whitening creams, and loud Koreans. His tirade is punctuated by a lot of profanity and he uses a lot of words like “disgusting” to describe the state of things in this country.
Some parts of the video are amusing; most, however, are not. His take on our penchant for cutting table napkins into small squares are spot on. At one point, he mocks men who piss in public and then proceeds to do the act himself. The problem with satire is that it requires a particular skill to bring home the point effectively; when it works, it’s a great deal of rollicking fun, but when it doesn’t, it only succeeds in hurting sensibilities. Sieczka’s video is an epic failure as satire; he doesn’t overact, nor delivers his line tongue-in-cheek. And the dialogue does not qualify as satire either.
I concede that many of the things that Sieczka derides in his video are true and that most of the criticism is valid. However, I do find his video disconcerting in general. First, he used the United States as his point of reference for the many things that are wrong in the Philippines; the comparison is not only unfair and uncalled for, it is also self-serving because he is American. Second, the video does not present a context for his diatribe. True, nowhere does he say he hates the Philippines in the whole video, but neither does he qualify any of his tirades with an attempt to understand the cultural or even humane side of the things he found objectionable. And third, and probably most important, being racist and indulging in stereotypes just isn’t acceptable, satire or not. It’s just isn’t funny nor is it right to you call Koreans drunks or noisy; and even if it is funny, it still would be racist.
Sieczka and his supporters think those who found his video objectionable are either just a bunch of overly sensitive people with a misplaced sense of nationalism or plain losers with zero sense of humor. Oh please. I understand that an audience has a responsibility to try to comprehend and use gray matter when confronted with a stimulus such as a work of art (though it is a stretch to call Sieczka’s video as art). But since when has an audience been to blame for not getting a satire? Why should people be put to task because they didn’t see Sieczka’s video as a hilarious piece? And, what the heck, aren’t people entitled to their feelings anymore? Why should we put people to task for being hurt?
Sieczka put his video out there for everybody to judge. He should be man enough to accept people’s reactions as valid whether he likes them or not.
(Published in the Manila Standard Today newspaper on /2012/March/19)
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