Why the Filipino elite revile Willie Revillame
By James Cordova Apr 16, 2011 10:18AM UTC
You must be up to here with all the posts I’ve published on the controversy in the Philippines involving the popular and much hated TV host Willie Revillame. There are other things going on in my country, true, but Revillame and
what he did to that child continues to generate buzz. Yesterday, the country’s largest newspaper couldn’t help but run a banner story on this scandal, which has also been reported about in other parts of the world.
The context of this issue, however, is now clear to me. Although other bloggers had earlier posted the
theory that this — the backlash against Revillame, with members and leaders of what we Filipinos call the
burgis (the Filipino bourgeoisie, the middle class) and the elite baying for his blood for allegedly forcing the child to dance lewdly — is all about class, the members of the Philippines social media lynch mob (I will call them SMLM, only because I hate acronyms) who went after Revillame hammer and tongs are proving the theory right.
If you look and search for blogs and reactions about this case, you will notice a consistent pattern of spite for Revillame. Even though the management of Revillame’s network, TV5, has said that it is now undergoing changes in the program to ensure that the incident won’t happen again and that children who appear on any of its shows won’t be harmed or abused, the SMLM would have none of it. They’d say it’s pointless, that Revillame is incorrigible, that only his head impaled on a stick would satisfy their hunger for justice.
One fellow who’s quite strident in his revulsion of Revillame is
John L. Silva, a blogger and “advocate for the arts and heritage preservation” — in short, a member of the cultural elite. Read his blog and you will see what I mean. He is the type of person who tends to impose his cultural and intellectual taste on others, especially the “uncultured” masses.
Silva and the SMLM are not concerned about the child or protecting his rights. If they were, they never would have uploaded that spliced and edited video on YouTube, spread it and shared it relentlessly.
If they were, they never would have used the child’s image and identity in a campaign to try to destroy Revillame.
If they were, they never would have suggested that the people at TV5 are pedophiles and that the poor child had been one of their victims.
The child, to put it bluntly, was exploited by these self-righteous, arrogant individuals to bring down Revillame from his perch in Filipino popular culture because what he is and what he does offends these people.
Revillame is undoubtedly the most popular and powerful male entertainer in the Philippines right now. He allows poor people to make fools of themselves on his show, to express the sorry state of their lives, to display their uncomfortable and unpleasant truths for everyone to see. That is something that the Filipino elite always reviles. We’re not supposed to wash our dirty linen in public. We’re not supposed to show our wretchedness.
The elite always frowns upon such display of naked truthfulness because – more than a show of their tackiness, their uncouthness and their seeming inability to distinguish what is tasteful and what is crass — these truths, these realities can release a jolt of guilt among the elite. Unfortunately, it is a guilt so powerful Silva and the others mistake it for a call to action.
As a result, they now revile Revillame because he exploits the sufferings of the poor. Because he makes millions — he is, by the way, one of the country’s biggest taxpayers — out of their sufferings. But has the SMLM and the elite ever questioned some larger truths about this state of exploitation?
Who is Revillame compared to the exploitation by corporations of their workers, many of them children? Has the SMLM put up Facebook pages to denounce, for instance Nestle, which has been violating the rights of its workers for decades now so that many of them have been on strike for years and years already? Do they even care that several of the leaders and members of the Nestle workers union have been murdered over the past years? Did the SMLM ever call a boycott of Nestle products?
Who is Revillame compared to the companies who use child laborers and continue to do so with the complicity of authorities?
Who is Revillame compared to the multinational mining companies that are ravaging the Philippine countryside, displacing thousands of residents from their homes and communities?
Who is Revillame compared to government agencies such as the Department of Labor and Employment, the social welfare department — agencies that have failed to protect the rights and welfare of children?
Who is Revillame compared to the Philippine military, whose counter-insurgency operations have killed or maimed innocent children in the provinces?
Who is Revillame compared to companies who don’t pay their workers adequately, which results in the hunger and suffering of their children at home?
The point here is not to exalt Revillame. The point here is to question the SMLM and thoseburgis who have displayed a misplaced sense of justice and righteousness. The point is, Revillame is not the problem — he is a symptom of the problem.
And that problem is the failure of our leaders — and the country’s economic, cultural and intellectual elites — to pull the country and its citizens from the quagmire of poverty and ignorance. Why do you think those Willing Willie contestans brave the heat and the hours lining up to be studio guests and contestants? It’s not because they have aspirations to be discovered by a talent manager and become the next big thing on Philippine TV. It is because they want and need something that, as far as they are concerned, only the generous hands of Revillame can provide.
You want to get rid of Revillame? Fine. But you cannot do that by demonizing him without demonizing as well those who view him as their own, as their savior. You cannot do that by insisting that TV networks drastically change their programming and produce only “quality” shows — quality is relative and subjective, as you know; what is trash to you can be pure entertainment to the masses. The networks cannot determine their own programming as long as they are reliant on advertisers who in turn spend advertising money depending on what shows the audience wants. And the audience wants Revillame. Some advertisers have pulled out of Willing Willie as a result of this but, I kid you not, they will be back as soon as the show is back on track again. It’s how the market works, whether you like it or not.
And whether you admit it or not, Revillame and whoever will take his place will not disappear as long as there is a segment in our society who are desperate enough to find him not only entertaining but useful.
This is not to say that the SMLM failed. It has, in truth, succeeded in bringing this issue out. That is to SMLM’s credit. But I wish it stops while it is ahead and, more important, consider as well the other aspects of this issue, in particular look at the possibility that somebody or some entity – more likely ABS-CBN – started this whole thing.
The issue is no longer about Revillame, people. It is about the entertainment industry now realizing that it has to have clear guidelines about children on their shows and it has to follow certain rules not to satisfy the taste and preferences of folks like Silva, mind you, but to protect these children. That, I think, is about the only good thing that has come out of this scandal.
A society becomes mature not by suppressing the display of what people like Silva and company deem as crass or distasteful behavior — we are a democracy, after all — but by ensuring that those who can potentially be harmed by such display are protected. In this case, however, those who are supposed to protect that child were sleeping on the job and those who professed to have the child’s interest at heart and in mind ended up violating him even more.
