Steve Martin in a Barong Tagalog! Pretty snazzy.

(via everythinginink)

So the new DOT campaign is out and my Facebook page for the past few days has been filled with status updates from advertising friends who are making their own versions and valiantly defending It’s More Fun in the Philippines from the buzz killers who are out to take that same fun away. Good luck to the haters. They are basically up against a bunch who make a living out of parrying critique of advertising concepts day in and day out.

This is not another post that will expound on the merits of the new campaign, which I do enough of on Facebook. Rather, it’s more of an exploration of why we care so much about tourism. Before I dive into that, however, I need to get a few things off my chest. First, It’s More Fun in the Philippines is off to a good start (Who doesn’t love that quirky banig? Even critics have to admit it’s charming), but the real proof of success will come in the number of tourist visits at the end of the campaign, which will take more than a catchy tagline to address. Second, while tourism can be a source of economic growth, it is not the answer to all our problems. Graft and corruption, gender inequality, armed conflict, nepotism, poverty - this can all happen in spite of, and because of, gains in tourism. There are also problems that grow as tourism grows, such as prostitution, and the displacement and loss of heritage among indigenous peoples. Third, branding such a diverse nation is a monstrous task. Finding the lowest common denominator in order to freeze cultural difference will inevitably prevent certain groups from benefiting from any strides made. Lastly, while we gear up for increased contact with foreign visitors, we seem so ill-equipped to represent ourselves positively yet fairly. Phrases like “we are a blend of the East and West”, “I’m Filipino but my father said my great great grand mother is Spanish”, “there’s nothing to see in Manila, just go to the beaches as soon as you can” sound innocuous and even practical, but they are significant elements of everyday talk that reinforce our deep-seated inferiority, especially in the face of non-Filipinos, and they are rooted in notions that deliberately seek to undermine who we have become. I have been guilty of uttering some these phrases in various points in time by the way. That we can’t recognize ourselves demeaning ourselves has always been a cause for alarm. All in all, we don’t want to come up with a spectacularly successful tourism campaign, then shoot ourselves in the foot afterwards.

In any case, the intensity with which people are willing to debate the campaign’s merits is remarkable. It’s a good sign I think, that amidst the many tides that challenge very concept of the nation (immigration, mixed marriages, political-economic blocs like ASEAN and EU), people still feel a deep sense of Filipino belonging and are protective of it. That goes for critics, too, who lament It’s More Fun’s similarity to a Swiss tourism campaign run years ago. Benedict Anderson, who made a landmark book in 1983 and who also studied nationalism among Filipinos once said, “If you cannot feel shame for your country you cannot be a nationalist.” Those who feel shame desire to feel pride, and those who feel pride often feel it’s important to do so because other dimensions ofthe nation make them feel ashamed. We all want things to work, but disagree on how to go about it. I would still rather have all this debate though rather than witness plain indifference.

Notably, I don’t just see this intensity online. It is also on the ground. In my research regarding clothing, design and nationalism, I’ve met people on the margins who, with their meager salaries, make it a point to buy a t-shirt of Philippine tourist spots every time they get the chance. I conducted a focus group among butchers and vendors at Tandang Sora Bayan Palengke at the time there was a call to vote for the Puerto Princesa Underground River as one of the world’s Seven Natural Wonders. They were watching out for the results like a hawk because they had been texting and actively campaigning for it. People also passionately talk about their hometowns and provinces as tourist destinations, and I’ve met one or two who aren’t particularly fond of the Philippine map polo shirts because their provinces tend to remain lost in its geography.

Tourism as a concept is important because we imagine that the realization of its agenda will bridge many everyday contradictions we struggle to solve. Tourism campaigns tickle the imagination and lead us into a world where we and the government can rally behind the same cause. Unlike the RH bill which divides us, few people go out there to denounce tourism per se (although they may denounce tourism campaigns). The idea of tourism soothes local anxieties amidst global realities. When a tourist destination such as the Chocolate Hills gains global recognition and fuels national pride, it puts the Philippines as well as Bohol in the map. Tourism as a fantasy is therefore able to manage locality versus Manila-centrism, and provides the assurance that our hometowns will not be engulfed by tides of globalization. We also hope that tourism will one day bridge tensions between tradition and modernity. Tourism cannot help but draw on our history and heritage, but its success as a national project will hopefully enable us to afford more modern comforts, such as functioning airports and efficient transport systems. It is as much about the past as it is about the future. The aesthetics of It’s More Fun in the Philippines aptly strikes a much needed balance. It follows contemporary design conventions that are rooted in Western Rationalism without necessarily privileging white space or resorting to the leeching of color, while still allowing the vibrance and diversity of our heritage to shine through. Images from tourism campaigns embody the potential resolutions to these national contradictions and anxieties. They consequently provide us with instant gratification. They are our temporary pay-offs to ourselves while we engage in the long and arduous grunt work of turning our personal visions of a better nation into reality.

So in keeping with my New Year’s Resolution to start a blog, I’m starting on the first weekday of the year with the last online sensation to hit us before year end: Vangie. For those who haven’t seen the video yet, Vangie is the Filipino answer to Siri, the IPhone 4s’s much-discussed virtual assistant.

The first few minutes start with the clean, structured and minimalist aesthetic characteristic of Apple products and its advertising, which could possibly dupe you into thinking that you are in for the real thing save for the markedly Filipino accent of the voice over. The realization that you are truly in for cultural indulgence happens shortly, with familiar situations, and the introduction of Vangie’s echosera ways.  

The beginning scenes illustrate Siri’s inappropriateness to our context in relation to space and directions in the Philippines, specifically, their being non-existent for various reasons. Incidentally, I am writing a chapter of my thesis that ties in space with Filipino identity, and this is probably why I found myself reflecting on the ties between space, culture and our mobile phones, and how the Vangie video brings this issue to fore, with or without the intention of the its creators.

Space and power are so inextricably linked. In the Philippines, you can expect a change in street names and landmarks with every change in administration. Having enough money and cachet grants you the power to blot out a piece of our history and heritage by replacing a street name that has existed for centuries by naming it after your dead lolo (although this happens in other countries too). Or, if you are Manny Pangilinan, you can name a major stadium after your own company. This is possible in spite of the irony that having a building and other entities affixed with “Smart” only underscores the fact that many things about the country are so un-smart.

On the other hand, our spaces transform in other ways. The frequency and arbitrariness with which U-turn slots are changed along major thoroughfares is not only ludicrous, but also life-threatening.  Driving along Commonwealth becomes somewhat of a game as you pass through several signs announcing the U-turn slot is only 100 meters away, only to be informed by enormous blocks of concrete that some people “up there” changed their minds. Repeatedly. You start to relax for a bit until it’s too late. You notice the blinking yellow light that marks the real U-turn slot just as you find yourself a good three lanes away from it. The yellow light continues to taunt you as you decide make a go for it lest the next U-turn slot turns out to be six barangays away, and also because you are typically running late for your appointment. It’s no biggie, incidentally, because you can always ask Siri to text out an update (provided your accent can be understood), and our concept of time is happily as flexible as our concept of space. Consequently, the dynamism in our notions and experiences of Filipino space requires a different set of navigational techniques that have yet to be captured by the apps from which Siri bases its navigational ability. Programs such as Google maps for example tend to treat space as neatly bounded, and roads and sidewalks as merely things vehicles and humans traverse through rather than doubling as spaces for livelihood and community.

Our newly-purchased mobile devices come in crisp plastic bags and sturdy boxes enveloped in that clinical, factory-fresh smell, and bear no folds nor fingerprints or any indication of human involvement – the theater of novelty that adds mystique to a product’s origins. Delighting in their newness often diverts us from the fact that many of the products we desire are conceptualized by people who live in a context different from ours and inscribe in these objects their own ways of framing the human experience, and their own assumptions regarding space, time, and technology. The capacity of our mobile phones and other devices to double as solutions to everyday life will fail to materialize if they likewise fail to encompass our basic, local, and everyday understandings of how the world works. While some of us may have the economic power to purchase the IPhone 4s, the phone’s lack of ability to respond according to our accents, spaces, times, relationships, and other dimensions of the Filipino experience as suggested by Vangie, still in the end subverts that power, and still leaves us in the margins of technological advancement. How would a revisit of Siri, for example, integrate more recent understandings of kaladkarin – another indicator that the meaning of time and space to us is always up for negotiation? In a place where our dependence on depende has in a way contributed to the immense usefulness of mobile technology, I wouldn’t count on the folks at Cupertino, as Vangie wisely points out, for the answers.