SHOW business and politics share many things in common, and actors and politicians are kindred spirits. Rumors and intrigue are precious commodities actors and politicians can exploit for that darker side of communication, which is to conjure facts out of lies. Gossip is a given in both fields, with politicians built to survive any stinking tale about them and actors coming out better known by the population. “Bring it on” is a motto that appears to be a code of courage when it is really a lack of shame and guilt, a product of life coached to dismiss any kind of compass, moral or directional. Actors and politicians, be they good in their craft or evil in their tasks, are recipients of destinies greatest boon—recognition of whatever form and persuasion.
Ethics makes the difference between the two: actors, whether they are good or faltering in their art, are in that realm where they are in touch with the transcendental power of creating roles and telling stories; politicians be they with the best of intentions or suffused with acclaimed ideals, which are anyway rare, enter a system that is de facto vile.
The actor faces the horizon in all its peregrinations and is ready to conjure dreams and inspirations or, in some plots, nightmare from which the human spirit can soar. Or, if that spirit plumbs the human capacity and reaches the depth of hell in other people, the journey is to learn, to know, to find a light. In the actor’s worst scenario, there is always a self, scared to death but still full of hope.
The politician faces a space and asks: What is in that space for me? There is no emptiness or vacant scene for a politician because he is always full of himself. That fullness, which is not necessarily positive, is the politician’s weapon to confront societies awkward in the presence of his uselessness. Or, haven’t you asked before the question that maybe, just maybe, we really do not need politicians?
But you might say: We also do not need actors. Maybe we don’t, but at least, give and take the mystery of supply and demand, we do not elect actors and we do not support them with our resources. If we watch them constantly and grovel at their perfumed feet, this is all a function of our own evolved and tortured psychologies, conscripted slaves to pulchritude. This is cliché but with actors, we elect them with our heart attuned to our own sense of beauty and magic, and enough marketing strategies to alter the orbit of our planet.
It is different with politicians. We vote them into power to find out that elections are really about consuming the power of the people. Commodified, the power becomes a product whose values come at a price—the loss of people’s power in the running of their lives, homes and communities.
Why do I belabor these points about art and politics? There is a need to rethink the kinship between actors and politicians for one good reason: What if actors become politicians and the politicians transform themselves into actors?
That is no more a question than a fact.
The last few days have seen exactly the answer to the puzzle of actors and politicians becoming one.
With a new virus attacking a society ancient in its ways of ineptitude and underdevelopment, islands were closed, towns and cities barricaded, and local governments made to fend for themselves. As if that was not enough, a huge TV network was ordered to shut down. In a republic accustomed to entertainment and fiction, corporations were reminded how they are vulnerable before a government that is able to achieve anything at the expense of labor, capital and freedom.
The troubled days of persecutions brought out an examination of capitalism and a meditation on class structure and structured inequalities. Intellectuals clashed with each other in essays acerbic, trenchant but still intelligent.
The masses could not be stopped. Online, there were rants. Somehow, when it comes to masses, their complaints are grudges, grumblings and rants.
Actors and other entertainment figures with nothing to do in the lockdown turned to social media to air their grievances and talk as citizens.
Coco Martin was the first from the row of established and popular actors to join in the angry discourses. The actor has all the right, of course, to talk and his thoughts be counted in the mounting confrontations. It was a long impassioned talk. It was, to say the least, unrehearsed, unscripted. Many expected the people to applaud the actor; after all, he plays the principled policeman in the longest-running drama series on Philippine television. I was expecting a wave of support for the young man but, instead, hostilities surprised me and, even more so I presume, the actor. The points made by those who did not favor the rage of Coco Martin were that the actor should have separated himself from the brave crusader named Cardo, and that he should have reined in his emotions and remained the gentleman. As in the TV series. And that his strong words should not have been uttered given how he has become a model of sorts for young people.
The issue is interesting: while the ratings of his show implies an approval of the character he portrays on free TV, that very character becomes presently the very reason why his critics think he should not abuse that authority, never mind if the conviction we attach on Coco Martin’s person is a creative invention.
I cannot assume what pushed Coco Martin to speak up was his perceived clout among his fans and followers. What we can read from this newly developed perspective is the general notion that actors have nothing intelligent to say. That, of course, is not true. The opposite with regard to politicians is scary—that being into politics makes them intelligent.
The loud voice of Coco Martin is justified. He has as much right as you and I to scream, shout, rage, rant and even curse at the sources of abuses and disgust. He is a citizen and he has rights.
Just as people are forgetting this incident, a deliberation on a new bill, otherwise known as the “Anti-Terrorist Bill,” has been initiated. The whole process has been fast-tracked and before any cineaste could pay homage to Tarantino and say “Kill Bill,” the bill is being readied for signing into law. This means that senators and congressmen have already voted in favor of the bill.
Online, a parallel discussion was going on, more vociferous and open than the mysterious rituals in the Legislative houses. This was the release of the names of those who voted for the bill to be enacted into a law. Vilma Santos, the actress who is now a congresswoman, was one of those in favor of the bill. There was a caveat though: she voted “with reservations.”
The world was angry and no “reservation” could assuage the people voicing their protest against Santos, as if it was her vote that made the difference. And yet, it seems, the debate was following a different trajectory. Those expressing their disappointment with Santos were rallying behind what could be the actress’s most iconic role, that of Sister Stella L., the activist-nun. Dramatic were the disappointments now not so much against the person of Vilma Santos but with the actress who portrayed with bravura the daring role of an anti-establishment persona belonging to the Catholic Church.
There are lonely voices defending Vilma Santos voting for the bill, if that act of favoring a bill perceived to be the death of free speech can be ever defended. These voices are saying Vilma was merely playing a role, that Sister Stella L. lives on in this fine film of the same title. Cogent, however, are the words of Lualhati Bautista, the author of Dekada ’70, proposing that “ang sining na walang paninindigan ay hindi sining [art not backed by a principled stand is not art.”
Art should always have irony. One irony is not lost on us: another celebrity, Lucy Torres-Gomez, given the latest listing, also voted in favor of the bill but no one is talking about her. No one really cares.