Tito’s fish tales

BY ANTONIO CONTRERAS       JULY 02, 2019

SENATE President Tito Sotto, in an interview with Christian Esguerra at ANC, said without batting an eyelash that it would be hard to determine the “exclusivity” of underwater marine resources such as fish in the West Philippine Sea, considering that we are not even sure where they are from. Some of the fish could even be from China, said Sotto.

And the country, already strained by the partisan vitriol, with a significant share being supplied by a President who, according to Sal Panelo, has a right to righteous indignation, just erupted in derisive laughter. A classic irreverence that broke the ice, except that what Tito Sotto did was to momentarily cause people to take a break from divisive and contentious talk about China. It was more like a torrential rain that doused a raging fire. Or like someone broke wind in the middle of a quarrel, and everyone just had to leave the room to get some fresh air.

Sotto later tried to wiggle out of the laughable predicament by pleading that what he said was said in jest, or to be more precise, in a “tongue in cheek manner.” Esguerra’s director may have missed the cue and failed to hit the button for the canned laughter. In any case, it is easy to believe that Sotto was only “tonguing his cheek.” After all, his other career aside from being Senate President, is that of a professional comedian.

What Sotto has unleashed, however, is classic Filipino sense of humor now juxtaposed with a healthy dose of political criticism.

Netizens feasted on the opportunity to turn Sotto’s fish tale into a moment to conjure parodies and memes. People began turning local fish names to Chinese. And this has made people erupt in laughter by themselves in front of their monitors or while checking their handsets. The laughter generated when fish names were turned to sound Chinese once again became a living tribute to Filipino creativity and wicked sense of humor. Bee So Go, Too Lee Ngan, Ga Loong Gong, Kan Doo Lee, Boo Tan Ding and Tee Lah Piah are just some of the notable ones. In canteens and eateries, customers began asking for the nationality of the fish that was being served. Cory Aquino may have used the price of galunggong for her presidential campaign against Ferdinand Marcos. But it was Tito Sotto who turned fish into a political commodity.

Tito Sotto also did not escape being the object of derisive laughter. Some people just can’t believe he spoke in jest, leading them to lament the fact that as Senate President it is simply worrisome that he would lead a group that has a good number of jokers (i.e. love to crack jokes). There is Sen. Bato dela Rosa whose serious claim that the UNCHR is a country generated derisive laughter. And there is Sen. Imee Marcos who joked about inviting Igorots to perform a ritual dance to drive away the negative spirits from the office she inherited from termed-out senator Antonio Trillanes 4th, its former occupant, except that some Igorots, and Trillanes, did not find it funny.

Several critical commentators in social media lost no time in painting the incoming Senate as a circus, simply because we have elected what these critics label as clowns.

But lest we end up demeaning clowns, it is useful to call the attention of readers to the theory of literary theorist and philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin on the political function of clowns and jokers. Bakhtin argued that in Medieval Europe, carnivals became opportunities to invert the power and authority of the church and the state. Court jesters and clowns were able to parody the King or the clergy without fear of losing their heads or being excommunicated. In modern times, Bakhtin talked about the carnivalesque, which he used to describe an event where licensed transgressions of symbols, persons and institutions representing authority happen through the use of comic violence, bad language, satire and exaggerations. Social media has become a venue for the mounting of carnivalesque events that seek to make fun of authority, through the use of meme and satire.

Tito Sotto as Senate President can only become a Bakhtinian clown mocking China with his fish tale, and indeed turn it into a real tongue-in-cheek moment, if he actually confesses that he was using it as criticism, masquerading as humor, of China’s excessive intrusion into our exclusive economic zone (EEZ). But was he? His tacit insistence, using alleged expert analysis, that the sinking of Gem-Ver was not intentional makes one doubt if he really tongued his cheek to take a veiled jab at China. On the other hand, his insistence that China can be allowed to fish in our EEZ only if Filipinos are also allowed to fish in theirs, may actually be an indication that he is in fact telling the President not to give in to China’s one-sided demands on Recto Bank.

In any case, while Tito Sotto’s tongue-in-cheek fish tale may or may not qualify as a form of carnivalesque, the memes and derisive parodies that image him as a clown masquerading as a senator that exploded in social media are definitely and clearly Bakhtinian. Those who make fun of Sotto are undoubtedly using satire, exaggeration and comic violence as weapons to ridicule what for them was a senseless and thoughtless remark by the Senate President. It was an expression of anger that coincided with the dissatisfaction felt by a growing number of people towards the way the President has been mishandling the issue of China. In the end, the memes and parodies of Sotto and his fish tale were generated by citizens not only to ridicule him and the establishment he represents. These were also creatively deployed by people who are using humor and parody to express their anger and frustration with the President and his perceived obsequiousness to China.

https://www.manilatimes.net/titos-fish-tales/577997/