Blogger Rom in her latest article National Artist makes a case for Francis Magalona‘s eligibility as, well, “national artist”. Ultimately, her verdict is a less-than-resounding aye:
Rounding up the Yes-Maybe-No-Maybe-Yes tally for the five criteria for National Artist, it would seem that the ayes have it. But then again, mere eligibility is no guarantee for conferment of the honor.
In the usual efficiency by which my Vulcan mind processes information, the underlying simplicity of Rom’s pained evaluation of Magalona’s eligibility quickly emerges:
Pwede na yan.
The criteria Rom mentions are set forth by the Cultural Center of the Philippines and the National Commission on Culture and the Arts, to wit:
:D Living artists who have been Filipino citizens for the last ten years prior to nomination as well as those who have died after the establishment of the award in 1972 but were Filipino citizens at the time of their death;
:D Artists who have helped build a Filipino sense of nationhood through the content and form of their works;
:D Artists who have distinguished themselves by pioneering in a mode of creative expression or style, making an impact on succeeding generations of artists;
:D Artists who have created a significant body of works and/or have consistently displayed excellence in the practice of their art form, enriching artistic expression or style; and
:D Artists who enjoy broad acceptance through prestigious national and/or international recognition, awards in prestigious national and/or international events, critical acclaim and/or reviews of their works, and/or respect and esteem from peers within an artistic discipline.
Certainly these are not the kind of criteria of the type that Filipinos prefer to be measured against, because with the exception of the first one (even Romeo Jalosjos qualifies for that one), meeting these standards is a non-trivial challenge; that is of course if Yours Truly were to be the one interpreting the standards.
So how would I judge a candidate with reference to the above five criteria?
Fasten your seat belts and enjoy the ride…
Living artists who have been Filipino citizens for the last ten years prior to nomination as well as those who have died after the establishment of the award in 1972 but were Filipino citizens at the time of their death.
I dunno about this one. This criterium flies against our habit of extending our rallying Galing Pilipino! slogan to include ethnic Filipino high-achievers who grew up in other lands and are by all intents and purposes products of those societies. Though these folk are “Filipino” merely by ethnic affiliation, the sentiment of the society seems to think otherwise — a cherished belief that the “Astig!” section of ABS-CBN’s Bandila news program regularly capitalises on.
So as judge, I shall declare this particular criterium exempt from my evaluation.
Artists who have helped build a Filipino sense of nationhood through the content and form of their works.
Praying the rosary is a meditation device prescribed by the Catholic Church. It focuses the mind away from “impure” thoughts and provides a measureable standard by which one’s religiousness can be evaluated. Thus a person who prays the rosary once a month can be said to be “less religious” than one who prays the rosary everyday. But step back and rephrase the question to one that asks whether a person’s frequency of prayer necessarily determines the depth of her spirituality, and the answer becomes hopeleslly debatable.
Has a sense of nationhood been built despite generations of Filipinos who grew up standing in attention while reciting the Panatang Makabayan and singing Bayang Magiliw every morning at 7:45 in front of their classrooms? Debatable.
Will a sense of nationhood be built when subjected to the “patriotic” songs of and musings of national artists like Jim Paredes, Joey Ayala, and — God rest his soul — Francis Magalona? Even more debatable.
The challenge in building a “Filipino sense of nationhood” does not lie merely in “form” or “content”. The nature of the challenge resides in the substance that (a) underpins said form and content and (b) is crystallised in the minds of those that regard said form and content.
Artists who have distinguished themselves by pioneering in a mode of creative expression or style, making an impact on succeeding generations of artists.
My standards of what a “pioneer” (in the sense that it is used in this criterium) of any endeavour is are very exacting. True pioneers introduce to the collective culture and intellect of her society things and constructs that are fundamentally new and architecturally groundbreaking. She may use as her building blocks things and constructs already existing but will put them together to form new and innovative patterns.
Artists who have created a significant body of works and/or have consistently displayed excellence in the practice of their art form, enriching artistic expression or style.
Let’s simplify this one a bit because it sounds like something Abe Margallo would have come up with. So how about this…
Prolific artists whose body of excellent work forms a whollistic and internally-consistent message framework.
…sounding a bit more like something that I would come up with (and therefore a bit more to my liking).
This harks back to the point the eminent Nick Joaquin makes in his brilliant essay Heritage of Smallness where he writes:
About the one big labor we can point to in our remote past are the rice terraces–and even that grandeur shrinks, on scrutiny, into numberless little separate plots into a series of layers added to previous ones, all this being the accumulation of ages of small routine efforts (like a colony of ant hills) rather than one grand labor following one grand design. We could bring in here the nursery diota about the little drops of water that make the mighty ocean, or the peso that’s not a peso if it lacks a centavo; but creative labor, alas, has sterner standards, a stricter hierarchy of values. Many little efforts, however perfect each in itself, still cannot equal one single epic creation.
A point I highlight many times in my book but succinctly summarise in this snippet:
Indeed, large scale frameworks need to encompass large scale things. The skeleton of an elephant is not made up of collections of skeletons of mice. The skeleton of an elephant is one encompassing grand design that befits the scale of the animal it supports.
So last but not least…
Artists who enjoy broad acceptance through prestigious national and/or international recognition, awards in prestigious national and/or international events, critical acclaim and/or reviews of their works, and/or respect and esteem from peers within an artistic discipline.
Dude! Come on now — “broad acceptance”?
The popularity of a message or product has never been a good indicator of its quality, substance, and validity any more than the Filipino favourite noontime variety show Wowowee is a worthwhile watch compared to The Discovery Channel.
Let’s not forget, for that matter, that this economic “crisis” had its roots in the pontifications and “expert” advise of Nobel laureate “economists” and MBA-indoctrinated “analysts”. Need I also mention that many of the politicians who ran the country aground over the last 50 years were be-credentialled “experts” who are “broadly accepted” within their respective disciplines?
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Epilogue:
Many of you have probably worked out by now where all this is headed, so I’ll cut to the chase:
I nominate myself as candidate for the distinction “National Artist” of the Philippines.
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haah, self nomination. I gotta hand it to you, much self confidence you definitely do have.
Ulol, you cannot even explain what a derivative is…..And yet you spew nonsensical garbage with your circles.
I have a few friends who are quants and they are quick to point out that they all start their models with the words, “We believe……
They do not intend it do be doctrinal. Economic quants are the same with the words “If…..Unfortunately most especially here degrees are thought of as commodities. Those in government who use their posts as capital to make money often need these economic quants to legitimize their crimes.
From salt being a store of value that derived its value for preserving food to bills of exchange, quedans to currency itself which are simple derivatives of value or claims over vlaue
Selling receivables is almost as old as time itself. In the old days you sold debtors as slaves. Slaves were simple derivatives of value.
In the time of post industrial societies where you have tremendous overcapacity and surplus monetary finance you can fashion all sorts of derivatives to sell or trade. Insurance(hedges), options are all available Futures, or options to hedge against future loses came to being due to surplus production of products.
Buying derivatives based on stock equities is simply trying to make money of future direction of prices.
That is what financial markets are all about based on the most simple of derivative product, money, which is still the alien abstract of labor. As long as you believe that labor is the original money paid for everything.
For hundreds years bankers have been screwing up the power to create that claim over value. They have done it again big time. Even the Romans screwed up their derivative currency.
bO you are dumb soooo dumb it is not funny.
Hahahahaha, why Benigs, you are really “brilliant”! I was about to comment that we should nominate you as National Artist after reading most of your all-too familiar drivel.
Or should we say, National Comedian instead?. LOL.
By the way, Filipino Voices website is looking chirpy with its new design. Congrats.
Stidi ka lang dyan, Professor J_AG. You are too quick to think your position here as resident “expert” on global markets is in peril just because I make a brilliant simplification of what is made out to be a complicated affair by “experts” such as yourself.
As such i find it baffling that you:
:D Make a point of saying that…
… and then…
:D Go off and dish out a litany of examples that merely demonstrates that you memorised your textbooks on the history of money and finance quite well;
… after which you…
:D point out that the $5 bill in my pocket or the IOU note scribbled on a napkin, for example, are also types of derivatives.
And then make a rather quaint claim that I — of all people — am dumb.
In case you haven’t noticed, J_AG (you may have to read your above comment again), by saying all of the above, you merely re-iterate what I more coherently said in my previous article — that this whole “financial crisis” is simple. As you yourself said: “Even the Romans screwed up their derivative currency”.
Funny too about the third smiley above. That’s like arguing that a washing machine is a type of robot — one that specialises in washing clothes — just as much as those million-dollar machines that can be found spot welding body panels in one of Toyota’s excellent production facilities in Japan also have a claim to the label “robot”. However, carrying on with that example, in a normal conversation among sensible people who exercise a bit of insight in the use of the lexicon, when the word “robot” is mentioned, there is tacit agreement among all honourable parties that a perverse extension of the concept of “robot” (one that includes clothes washer and bread crispers — aka toasters) is not implied.
Coming back to the field of Finance (your “expertise” as you are wont to emphasize) Obviously when you read Fortune magazine and find the word “derivative” mentioned in one of the articles in that venerable magazine, you can be quite assured that the author of the article that contains the word does not mean to use it in the broad sense you demonstrate in your comment above that inadvertently would include a homeloan contract or a salt brick.
Nevertheless, even the simplest of those examples of “derivatives” you read off your textbook (which you probably keep handy under your pillow) still fits my brilliantly scalable analogue of the concept:
Of course the simplest forms of “derivatives” don’t require the convoluted stipulations that people like Abe are good at dishing out and none of the pseudo mathematics that people like maybe you, J_AG, formulate on a daily basis.
Konting thinking, pare. ;)
Ive always thought of benny as a performance artist.
(And buhay pa pala yung labor theory of value?)
National Artist is too small a title.
Benign0 For President, bar none.
The National Bulls*#& Artist, trying sooo hard category. :)
National Artist for benigz? Nah, too small. A Pulitzer prize more apt… for “Inconsequential CRITISISM”.
Did Benedict Ignacio, brilliant banker that he is, wrote this article, come up with the word “whollistic”, looked at it for a minute and said “Pwede na yan…”
benigz a bank employee? holy cow!
pwede na, australia naman.
benign0: i imagine that you read my entire post … especially that part at the end where I said that maybe francis m’s fans should be satisfied with the merit award, i.e., they should quit casting a moist eye on the national artist plum. Pwede na yung merit award. But Francis M as national artist? Yun, di pwede yun.
well, benign0 doesnt read articles in full. he’ll just look at something to criticize.
I don’t need someone to tell me what is ART. I know a good art when I see one. Not because it’s fair-skin-white-skin Tisoy Francis Magalona. Would it have mattered if Francis Magalona was a brown-skin-punked-nose-igorot-aborigine? Will it would have. And the punked-nose wouldn’t even have wasted cyberbytes in this blog.
See? We do have skin problem. We are bigots and racists.
Art is Art. We need it to have our lives interesting.
hahaha :) funny you benigs. ikaw talaga. o sige puede na yan
Leyte, Francis M do not deserve accolade from me. He doesn’t look like a Filipino. He’s soooo tisoy. You know Filipinos like tisoys and tisays and intsiks as long as it doesn’t look brown like us.
Dude, we are 2nd class citizen in our country discriminated by our own fellow brown brothers.
oh, i don’t know about you renato. i am proud of my skin . it’s a great asset to have. i can compete what about you?
of course, francis cannot be a hero.
i don’t get ur critique… to this…:
“Artists who enjoy broad acceptance through prestigious national and/or international recognition, awards in prestigious national and/or international events, critical acclaim and/or reviews of their works, and/or respect and esteem from peers within an artistic discipline.”
you write:
“Dude! Come on now — “broad acceptance”?
The popularity of a message or product has never been a good indicator of its quality, substance, and validity any more than the Filipino favourite noontime variety show Wowowee is a worthwhile watch compared to The Discovery Channel.”
ok. i’ll bite. if broad acceptance via awards, respect, recognition is NOT enough…
what would?
martin scorsese has scads of films, most of which enjoy broad acceptance, wouldn’t you say? and yet he has only one academy award.
On the other hand, would you consider the works that scoop up all the major MMF awards good enough to win their directors National Artist accolades?
If indeed the Filipino psyche involves crab mentality, I nominate benign0 for the King Crab award, no contest. :)
Check out my new “It’s simple, really.” animated gif, guys! :D
If it’s so simple, why are you not CEO of your company yet? Why are you here? Why is your book not on the best seller list? Surely evil forces have conspired to thwart your very good motives.
Clearly, your talents are wasted, wasted on trivial matters such as business process management. To whom in your organisation do we write a letter of complaint? We must talk to your boss, give him a copy of your book, direct him to your website so he may be enlightened. For surely, your recession-busting ideas are not limited to pinoys, but they are world-class ideas, are they not?
After that, we should talk about syndication. Getting your well written jargon free simple prose out there, translated in many languages. Stand up for this revolution Benedict! Quit your menial job! Devote full time to this revolution. We love you, we really do.
congratulations! :)
If one would take time to really observe and consider to understand deeper the ideas of Benign0 in this forum and in his other websites, it can be sensed that he has indeed a kind of genius in him.
Like most genius, he also has the typical characteristic of being arrogant. His display of intellectual arrogance in some of his posts is sometimes genuine. Showing genuine intellectual arrogance carries real conviction about the idea being presented and not just mere display of intellectual prowess so as to “outwit” other ideas (as fake intellectual arrogance does).
Sometimes in looking for “good ideas”, I try to take notice the level of arrogance the idea is carrying. It gives me a hint to the reality of the conviction the author has about his idea.
It is when we are carried by the arrogant way an idea is presented that we get lost in the central idea of the discourse. At times when we encounter arrogance in a discourse, brushing off the arrogant way the idea is presented, we may successfully get to the real kernel of what the writer is really trying to convey.
While good ideas can sometimes be profoundly expressed in arrogant, critical, or sarcastic ways, one must also consider that most recipients are not always maintaining an open-minded attitude to such ways of conveying ideas.
Non-arrogant way of expressing an idea almost all the time succeeds.
eherm, benigz?
I say, Amen, to the points raised by this particular comment.
And if I may add, BenignO expresses his ideas with neither any childish bashfulness or timid hesitance, knowing full well that the regulars in this forum will receive his words with less than genteel negation.
Many of his ideas or theses are definitely not mainstream currently, and thus quite unpopular and hard to digest (especially for those at the short end of his spiels, which essentially are all of us here in the homeland and elsewhere).
Thus, I can only commit that when I do visit this forum, his entries have my two eyeballs and attention. After all, how can one ignore that gravatar that he uses? HiHiHi.
More power!