What Metro Manila billboards tell us about the Filipino character

by benign0

Driving up or down EDSA, the main road transport artery through the Philippine megalopolis of Metro Manila, is like navigating a badly-designed website. The huge billboards that line the iconic thoroughfare competing for the attention of motorists and their passengers are monuments to the aesthetic sensibilities of Filipinos. Manila, after all, is the cultural capital of the Philippines. As such, the beauty or non-beauty of Metro Manila reflects upon the character of the Filipino.

What then does EDSA tell us about the Filipino? On the basis of the billboards that line it, perhaps a few phrases come to mind:

- Vain and narcissistic

- Starstruck and celebrity obssessed

- Sexually repressed

- Confused sense of identity

- Brand conscious

That’s how much one would gather from the structures flashing the obnoxiously large photoshopped images of underwear-clad fair-skinned celebrities sporting their best it’s-all-about-me or come-hither looks in their faces, with the mandatory overstated brand logos juxtaposed prominently to make extra sure the wholepoint of it all is not missed.

The proliferation of these billboards and the shape and form that their content has taken is an exquisite laboratory of Darwinian natural selection. It is a spectacularly colourful outcome of a fierce competition for the Filipino consumer’s eyeballs, much the same way that our once magnificent rainforests and the majestic canopy formed by its tall hardwood trees was shaped by a mad scramble to compete for a view of the sky and the energy-giving sunlight that comes from it.

So whereas, the Inquirer.net Editor laments that she may “never see a tree at all” until these billboards “fall”, perhaps seeing Metro Manila’s “billboard blight” under a different light might help. In a sense, these billboards have become Manila’s “trees”. And instead of the sunlight trees compete for, it is the line of sight of the glazed eyes of commuters and motorists stuck in traffic that these modern-day urban trees race to grab.

Which brings us to the point of this article. The point of this article is that the whole issue about obnoxious and, allegedly, “obscene” billboards has inspired the lyricist in me; thus:

Pity Metro Manila

It’s for so long been a killa

Noxious fumes

Seep into aircon rooms

From vehicles barely roadworthy

That spew their exhaust without worry

What we need in this sad city

Is a bit more eco-tenacity

Alas but to aspire to such beauty

Is to understand Da Pinoy’s apathy

As there is nary a goal to be

A city made lovely by a tree

So I may never see a tree at all

Until Manila’s billboards fall

But perhaps to escape this billboard blight

It might help to see these under a different light

The tree that no longer takes root in our city

Now exists as a mutant monstrosity

Behold the creature given life

By the nature of Filipino vice

When it comes to aesthetic taste

The Filipinos’ never fails to lay waste

The billboard blight we name with irony

Now reflects our character with fidelity.

A brilliant piece of Filipino poetry brought to you by benign0, lyricist extraordinaire.