Wa’ Na Epek: Juana Change on priests and RH

This is almost eight minutes of a video entitled Mga Anak ng Diyos, and is really quite slow and stretched, given the kind of message it wanted to deliver in the end: No More Padre Damaso, Ipasa ang RH Bill. Now the latter is obviously the point here, telling the story as it does of four women who are friends, three of them pregnant. And yes this was also pregnant with possibility, given the fantastic actresses who were part of this video like Dexter Doria and Raquel Villavicencio, both of whom I think should be in a sitcom with Mitch Valdez and Tessie Tomas and strut it ala Golden Girls. But this is beside the point. The point being that Juana Change played by Mae Paner and as a collaborative project among artists on the Convergence Team, has allowed us to expect sharp and witty videos on current issues that hit on the Pinoy’s apathy and government’s inefficiency in equal turns. The point being that Juana Change aka Mae Paner reached an amount of relevance and importance given the role she played in the PNoy campaign, and later on her disdain for what she saw were more and more trapos (traditional politicians) suddenly calling the shots. The point being that we’ve come to expect an amount of creativity given the past two years that we have known Juana Change, she who is both Pinoy everywoman but also her harshest critic, she who seems to always know to take a tone that isn’t easily offensive to anyone because it hits a truth that’s in the back of our heads, or just that one that’s a dull feeling in the pits of our stomachs. Suffice it to say that heretofore, Juana Change hasn’t disappointed, seeing as it has yet to be about shooting from the hip or just as quickly riding on some bandwagon: Juana Change as an entity that is Mae Paner the Convergence Team has just always seemed to have a mind all its own. But here being the most important point: the recent Juana Change video Mga Anak ng Diyos is just disappointing. For the most part, it barely gets a discussion going on the truths about the RH Bill versus the lies that are spread about it, nor does it bring the discussion to a level that’s more intelligent as it seems to just be screaming in our faces the whole time. Here, there isn’t a sense of how the RH Bill is NOT about being anti-Church or anti-God, how it isn’t at all about abortion, how it isn’t just about enjoying sex. And yet throughout the video words like cunnilingus, blow job, hand job are thrown around for no good reason and without a clear sense of what these mean vis a vis the RH Bill. This might get extra points for the daring to say these words, but it’s also ultimately dangerous to be throwing them around without a sense of what for. There is also no good reason to include the issue of priests impregnating members of their flock in this – or any – discussion of the RH Bill. In Mga Anak ng Diyos, Juana herself plays the role of the woman whose first child is the offspring of a priest, now monsignor, the role which Lou Veloso plays, whom she faces in the present as the more critical follower who asks questions about birth control and has had a ligation. This might be to concretize the hypocrisy of the Pinoy Church, or to point out that even Church leaders commit sins that are bigger than we can imagine, but to point it out here brings the discussion elsewhere other than the RH Bill. It also seems to be pointing a finger at the Church for being sinners too, when the discussion on RH shouldn’t to begin with be about sins, or immorality, or burning in hell. All of which of course the Church insists it is about, and while it’s well and good to respond, it’s also clear that the discussion needs to be brought to a place that’s beyond all these things, and is about the more crucial questions that need to be answered. That is of course if the goal is changing people’s minds about RH. For one thing, let’s define what conception is, when exactly a woman might conceive, given the science of sex and not the imagination of priests. Let’s talk about birth control in its different forms, assess each one, and see which do their thing after inception and not before it. Let’s discuss women’s rights in relation to having healthy bodies without her being pregnant, just her with a choice, just her with a sense of what is right given her body’s capacity at and recovery from pregnancy. Let’s discuss how much money it takes to live in this country, how much to bring up one child with all of his/her rights respected to the hilt. Let’s look at why the poor can only become poorer without the RH Bill in place. This video would’ve been more powerful – maybe even funnier – had there been no priest as counterpoint, instead just a bunch of women talking about sex and in the process showing the misconceptions and conservatism, hypocrisy and insecurity that the lack of an RH Bill has resulted in all these years. This video’s power was in its goal. Its weakness was in its hysteria, because this meant bringing too many things into the discussion. But maybe the worst part of this video is that it rides on the Carlos Celdran Damaso horse in the most uncreative of ways and probably the most ineffective. That portrayal of Damaso via Lou Veloso isn’t quite a viable image anymore, not given the contemporary Filipino Catholic priest who comes in forms that are friendlier and cooler, willing to engage in conversation and not just insist on a set of rules. These priests do not impose fear or guilt, as they do create a version of friendship between themselves and their followers, within which we may all speak to Papa Jesus (as Veloso’s character calls Him). The truth is, Damaso is but only a concept, one that still exists, but not as an individual priestly character. When Carlos Celdran walked through the Manila Cathedral holding that DAMASO sign, it was powerful because he was talking to the leaders of the Church and telling them they were still versions of Damaso given their stand on Reproductive Health. When Damaso is invoked by Juana Change in this video, there’s a distinct possibility that the Pinoy viewer, katoliko-sarado¹ and otherwise, will just take offense at the portrayal of the priest as simplistically a hypocrite, and take the side of the Pinoy Church. That just might be worse for a video that’s mostly wa epek². ¹katoliko-sarado. A label in Filipino for the ultra-conservative Catholic. Literally translates to “Closed Catholic" to speak of Catholics who seriously follow and abide by the Church’s and the Bible’s rules. ²wa epek, wa’ na epek. Idiomatic expression in Taglish. Shortcut for “Walang effect" and “Wala nang effect" which literally translate to “No effect" and “No more effect". Street slang and/or old school gay lingo.