July 26, 2006
READ: Are you a Madonna or Maria Clara? by Gabriela Lee
(from Meg magazine, July 2006)
Virgin/Vamp. Madonna/Whore. Has Maria Clara become the new Madonna, and Madonna (the pop star) the new whore?
Maria Clara clearly gets no reinvention. As a construct of the male nationalist imagination (namely Rizal's), she still exemplifies iconic tradition for the well-to-do Filipina - well-groomed, well-bred and unwaveringly loyal (in the extreme kind of way) to her man. By implication, she could use a little - no, make that A LOT - of initiative when it comes to getting what she REALLY wants. And the backbone to stand up to THE MAN, tell him off, give him the middle finger, yo. Unless a loyalty that doesn't waver is a form of strength. Or unless her sisterly vocation is really sincere, but ALL or nothing pretty much sums up the wasted potential there.
But really, let's not confuse strength with closing off ALL options in life by devoting it to God just 'cause her man was a "revolutionary/terrorist" on a mission. And men like Ibarra/Simoun have their priorities, and know that they have their cherished reward to claim later on - if all goes well, that is.
Strength, it seems, is a modern quality, and the danger of setting binaries on our cultural identity by way of Maria Clara is that Filipinas can't be associated with anything modern - they have to be tagged as such. Sure, women have achieved so much since then, in terms of education and work - pretty much lazy writer's shorthand for empowerment without any proper context - think centuries of struggle that definitely had its gains, but the fight doesn't end there. But we know what Gabriella Lee is getting at, right? Whatever. In spite of these supposedly self-explanatory achievements, this fluff piece implies that we've been born and bred into the Maria Clara mold with the potential to be modernized along the way. It's either this or that, in favor of traditional roots or the more liberated Western Other - in this case, Madonna. The latter also indicates progress. If Maria Clara is pre-empowerment, Madonna is all about empowerment and choice, up til the settling down part with filmmaker Guy Ritchie.
It's pretty laughable how Madonna's career highlights - or rather, what little is mentioned - have been sanitized for the tween reading set. Imagine taking a gigantic leap from Material Girl era Madonna to motherhood, ignoring both timeline and Madonna's unconventional decisions in raising and caring for her children, biological or otherwise (i.e. her dancers). Overidealized much? Choosing Madonna as a role model means taking in the good with the incredibly raunchy. Otherwise, if we only wanted snippets of her persona, we could've just ditched the whole Maria Clara thing and taken the "Which Madonna are you?" personality quiz instead.
And it almost goes without saying: Madonna is a bonafide media whore. Everything about her is a statement, even if the statement is as problematic as the exotic appropriation of things Japan or as controversial as her 1992 book SEX, which was in a nutshell, steamy bordering on S&M with straight/queer orgiastic photographs dubbed as pure fantasy, accompanied by prose of yet another persona, Dita the Mistress.
Ironically, Dita, the fantasy borne out of some desire for Erotica era Madonna to whet her sexual appetite via art porn, is not a kept woman. She's very take-charge, but varied reciprocity in terms of having different lovers and the experimentation that follows allows her to live in the ecstatic moment. Unlike courtesans and mistresses, the "whores" from the Madonna/Whore dichotomy, their status as kept women required them to conform to the rigid rules of the game.
Madonna herself had a choice in the direction of her career and how she wanted to present her sexuality, no matter how abhorable it may come across to Jesus freaks and the like. Obviously, that doesn't make her "the new whore."
(from Meg magazine, July 2006)
Virgin/Vamp. Madonna/Whore. Has Maria Clara become the new Madonna, and Madonna (the pop star) the new whore?
Maria Clara clearly gets no reinvention. As a construct of the male nationalist imagination (namely Rizal's), she still exemplifies iconic tradition for the well-to-do Filipina - well-groomed, well-bred and unwaveringly loyal (in the extreme kind of way) to her man. By implication, she could use a little - no, make that A LOT - of initiative when it comes to getting what she REALLY wants. And the backbone to stand up to THE MAN, tell him off, give him the middle finger, yo. Unless a loyalty that doesn't waver is a form of strength. Or unless her sisterly vocation is really sincere, but ALL or nothing pretty much sums up the wasted potential there.
But really, let's not confuse strength with closing off ALL options in life by devoting it to God just 'cause her man was a "revolutionary/terrorist" on a mission. And men like Ibarra/Simoun have their priorities, and know that they have their cherished reward to claim later on - if all goes well, that is.
Strength, it seems, is a modern quality, and the danger of setting binaries on our cultural identity by way of Maria Clara is that Filipinas can't be associated with anything modern - they have to be tagged as such. Sure, women have achieved so much since then, in terms of education and work - pretty much lazy writer's shorthand for empowerment without any proper context - think centuries of struggle that definitely had its gains, but the fight doesn't end there. But we know what Gabriella Lee is getting at, right? Whatever. In spite of these supposedly self-explanatory achievements, this fluff piece implies that we've been born and bred into the Maria Clara mold with the potential to be modernized along the way. It's either this or that, in favor of traditional roots or the more liberated Western Other - in this case, Madonna. The latter also indicates progress. If Maria Clara is pre-empowerment, Madonna is all about empowerment and choice, up til the settling down part with filmmaker Guy Ritchie.
It's pretty laughable how Madonna's career highlights - or rather, what little is mentioned - have been sanitized for the tween reading set. Imagine taking a gigantic leap from Material Girl era Madonna to motherhood, ignoring both timeline and Madonna's unconventional decisions in raising and caring for her children, biological or otherwise (i.e. her dancers). Overidealized much? Choosing Madonna as a role model means taking in the good with the incredibly raunchy. Otherwise, if we only wanted snippets of her persona, we could've just ditched the whole Maria Clara thing and taken the "Which Madonna are you?" personality quiz instead.
And it almost goes without saying: Madonna is a bonafide media whore. Everything about her is a statement, even if the statement is as problematic as the exotic appropriation of things Japan or as controversial as her 1992 book SEX, which was in a nutshell, steamy bordering on S&M with straight/queer orgiastic photographs dubbed as pure fantasy, accompanied by prose of yet another persona, Dita the Mistress.
Ironically, Dita, the fantasy borne out of some desire for Erotica era Madonna to whet her sexual appetite via art porn, is not a kept woman. She's very take-charge, but varied reciprocity in terms of having different lovers and the experimentation that follows allows her to live in the ecstatic moment. Unlike courtesans and mistresses, the "whores" from the Madonna/Whore dichotomy, their status as kept women required them to conform to the rigid rules of the game.
Madonna herself had a choice in the direction of her career and how she wanted to present her sexuality, no matter how abhorable it may come across to Jesus freaks and the like. Obviously, that doesn't make her "the new whore."
