The uncrowning of the ‘Komiks King’
On July 30, Malacanang announced that it had chosen to award seven individuals with the 2009 Order of National Artists. The conferment, signed on July 6, included four names that were not in the original set submitted by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA) and the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP). Three nominees survived the whim of the presidential pen – musicologist Ramon Santos was not so fortunate. Four others took his place: Cecile Guidote-Alvarez, presidential adviser on culture and NCCA’s executive director, comic book novelist Carlo J. Caparas, architect Bobby Mañosa, and fashion designer Pitoy Moreno.
Caparas, awarded for Visual Arts and Film, blithely accepted his award. His appeared to be the more heinous appointment to many critics. Although the box-office pull of his films is undeniable, none of his movies have been recipients of any sort of critical acclaim, his appointment as a National Artist for Film a cause for many filmmakers of several generations to recoil in disgust. It is his legacy in the comics industry that has earned him the deserved respect of so many – a respect that has been tarnished by an award that was obviously crafted less by art and more by politicking. Caparas, after all, was awarded for visual arts in graphic novels, irrelevant of the fact that it was not his hand that drew his characters. Although he was nominated in the literary category, his name was dropped from the list. The same is true for the selection panel of the visual arts.
Caparas’ story is one that comes straight from one of his hundreds of comic book dramas: the young man, poor but talented, dressed in a security guard’s uniform outside a building after night, scratching away at comic-strip dialogue in an old notebook. It would be safe to say that the conferment of the National Artist Award on this underdog may seem the very pinnacle of his life’s achievement, but what Dr. Jose Dalisay Jr. calls “the corruption of culture” may very well have destroyed decades of achievement for this man whose characters lived to fuel the imagination of a people.
Caparas has lashed out, calling all his critics elitists. He is thankful for this experience, because he has seen the height of society’s hypocrisy. He says that the elite are angry because a man from the masses broke into their territory. And so this is what Caparas is reduced to: an angry man, announcing his achievements, claiming his worth, carting photos of old drawings to prove to the English-speaking elitist that he is in fact an artiste of the highest degree – “other painters can’t do this!” –damning all other National Artists for writing their poems and English novels instead of producing films capable of filling movie theaters and comic books that fly off the shelves. It may be patent that he has no place in film or the visual arts –
no matter how many caricatures of Manoling Morato he produces at press conferences “to prove” that he can draw – but what is perhaps more ironic is that Caparas has turned himself into a raving elitist, only this time, his discrimination is against all things scholarly and academic.
“National Artist” means being known nationwide, says Caparas’ wife Donna Villa. It is a ridiculous presumption, and would exclude even the artists Caparas defends. It is not as if Muslim teenagers have occasion to admire Moreno’s evening gowns, and I would hesitate to ask the man on the street if he knows what Alvarez’s Peta means. And yet the award is not the white tower that Caparas styles himself as the challenger. The works of Nick Joaquin, Lino Brocka and many others have proved themselves both nationally significant and nationally recognized during their time. And yet to use the standards of Caparas is to protest that Willie Revillame and the Viva Hot Babes have not yet been considered National Artists.
Literature may have denied Caparas, the visual arts rejected him, but so were many others. There are many, many more giants of literature and film and the visual arts living today whose work demand recognition, and if someday Caparas’ name is nominated through the official process, as a luminary of literature, or of a new category altogether, it is certain that the public will accept his much-deserved achievement. Caparas, unlike his other equally controversial colleague, at least has the claim of having been legitimately nominated by the selection committee.
Alvarez, whose unlucky champion Eduardo Ermita damns her with faint praise – “she’s very good” – continues to wax indignant at the outcry over her nomination, one far more shameful than Caparas’, whose only mistake is a misguided sense of oppression. It is Alvarez who was never nominated in any of the categories for National Artist.
Critics have challenged her right to the award, arguing that her position as cultural adviser to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo now making the selections, as well as the executive director of the body screening the nominations, is fundamentally unethical.
The NCCA guidelines are clear in that NCCA and CCP board members, consultants, officers and staff are automatically disqualified from being nominated. I suspect the executive director of the NCCA falls under the category of NCCA and CCP officers and staff.
Alvarez’s one angry response ignores the guidelines completely, and only repeats, in shriller and shriller tones, that she had nothing to do with the actual selection, this in spite of National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera’s statement that it was Alvarez herself, as executive director of the NCCA, who had insisted on the President’s right to add names not discussed in the committee.
Alvarez laments the tempest her award has created. “It is unfortunate that our country is divided by politics. It is through arts that our people can be united. I pray that culture as the nourishing womb will eventually bond together our nation toward the betterment of our citizens.”
Beautiful words from one of the guardians of the country’s culture, ironic in the face of the events establishing just how little Ms Alvarez cares about the state of the arts – certainly not enough to put the reputation of the institution over her personal ambition. It is an attitude very much like that of the President she serves. And Caparas – the directorial hand behind such classics as “The Myrna Diones Story (Lord, Have Mercy!),” “Humanda Ka Mayor! (Bahala na ang Diyos),” “The Cecilia Masagca Story: Antipolo Massacre (Jesus Save Us!),” “The Vizconde Massacre Story (God Help Us!),” “The Untold Story: Vizconde Massacre 2 (God Have Mercy on Us!),” “Lipa Arandia Massacre (Lord Deliver Us from Evil/God Save the Babies!),” “The Maggie dela Riva Story (God … Why Me?),” “Victim No. 1: Delia Maga (Jesus, Pray for Us!)” and “The Marita Gonzaga Rape-Slay (In God We Trust!)” – may have discovered that to have President Arroyo in your corner ensures an ending far happier than having the ear of God. The Carlo J. Caparas story, if it ever gets produced, may very well have a different deity for its subheading.
