In a pig’s eye
CARTOONS HAVE been part of Philippine newspapers since the late Spanish era. They flourished in the reformist press during the propaganda and revolutionary period, and gained greater popularity during US colonization despite political constraints.
The most common form of cartoon in journalism appears in the editorial pages, where it supplements and/or reinforces what’s being said in the editorial. The best can make an argument more convincing. The laughter they provoke can deflate pomposity, distinguish heroes from villains, expose the contradictions in the statements of the high and mighty, and cut the powerful down to size.
Their “comic” intent is the one quality most people assume is their main, or even their sole, reason for being. But, although too often unremarked, they also comment on public issues, especially on governance and the behavior of government officials, as well as policy decisions and actions. They therefore share with reporting and commentary the same engagement with matters relevant to the citizenry as the rest of journalism.
The editorial cartoon’s cousin, the comic strip, is also presumed to be for entertainment, in contrast to the news and opinion pages where “serious” matters are reported and commented on. Not all have a comic intent. Some—now known as “graphic novels”—are long-running, convoluted stories of heroes and heroines who in the end finally triumph over adversity, with the hero getting the girl and the villain getting his just deserts. Like the editorial cartoon, however, the comic strip can also use the humor implicit in its name to comment on issues of public interest.
The most common comedic device in the comic strip, as in the editorial cartoon, is satire, which holds up wrongdoing, flaws, and failings to ridicule and sarcasm. Because satire through cartoons or comic strips is more immediately perceived and understood than, say, a commentary, it is when the comic strip ventures into social and political commentary with the use of satire that it sometimes becomes the object of anger and the target of censorship.
The extent of the freedom to comment on public issues through a cartoon or a comic strip depends, so it is widely assumed, on the state of press freedom, newspapers being their most common vehicles. Press freedom and free expression are protected by Article III Section 4 of the Philippine Constitution (“No law shall be passed abridging the freedom of speech, of expression, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for redress of grievances.”). Apparently, however, cartoons and comic strips as well as such forms of free expression as a demonstration or an art installation nevertheless tend to be regarded in the Philippines as outside the pale of that protection.
And yet cartoons and comic strips, whatever their subjects, are as much forms of expression as a newspaper editorial or column, a film, or holding up a streamer in a street demonstration. Like those other forms of expression, in a press freedom and free expression regime they may not be subjected to the prior restraint and/or subsequent punishment that mainly constitute censorship. They have relatively escaped censorship even in such regulated regimes as the Martial Law period, either because humor is grossly underestimated as a destabilizing factor in governance, or because its potential escapes government bureaucrats. (See “Bright Spot” Editor’s Note, and “The Political Cartoon’s Checkered Past” by Bryant Macale, Philippine Journalism Review, December 2002)
If governments tend not to be sensitive to the satire and sarcasm that are the main weapons of cartoons and comic strips, some Philippine institutions are. These tend to be the Catholic Church—it is after all the dominant Church in the Philippines—and the institutions identified with it.
Intramuros tour guide Carlos Celdran provoked Church ire enough for him to be convicted of “offending religious sensibilities” when he held up a streamer with the word “Damaso” on it during a religious gathering at the Manila Cathedral in 2010. The 2011 Cultural Center art installation “Poleteismo” by Mideo Cruz angered Catholic groups and individuals, resulting in the installation’s being taken down.
Although not in the same category of impact as either of these incidents, the June 4 episode of Philippine Daily Inquirer contributor Pol Medina Jr.’s “Pugad Baboy” (Pig’s Nest) comic strip enraged the administrator-nuns of the Catholic school St. Scholastica enough to threaten both Medina and PDI with a libel suit.
Rather than defend Medina’s right to free expression, the Inquirer suspended “Pugad Baboy” as a consequence, and Medina eventually resigned as a regular contributor to PDI’s “Comic Relief” section, perhaps out of the fear of both that a libel suit against cartoonist and publisher could prosper.
Which of course is more than possible, libel having come into prominence in the past few years as a leading means of silencing journalists, political activists and anyone else who has anything to say about any issue of public significance.
One could argue that just like St. Scholastica, which could have simply shrugged off the remarks of a strip character alleging that while it condemns gays, there are lesbians among both the school’s students as well as its administrators, the Inquirer also over-reacted by immediately suspending Medina. But there is no arguing against the very real threat of fines and imprisonment that could result from a libel conviction.
Without a libel law that penalizes conviction with prison terms of six months per count, St. Scholastica could have simply asked for an apology rather than silencing Medina by in effect threatening him with imprisonment, in the process establishing one more dangerous precedent in this country of dangerous precedents. Medina could just as quickly have made, after due reflection, such an apology in recognition of the fact that he might not have been as responsible as he should have been when he singled out the school for its alleged hypocrisy rather than the culture the Church of which it is a part has created out of the impossible mix of religious duplicity and worldly reality dominant in Philippine society.
The libel law does exist, however, and, from the demonstration effect of the three examples of Catholic outrage above, seems likely to remain in the Revised Penal Code. Every case like Pol Medina’s contributes to libel’s continuing existence as a threat to press freedom and to free expression in general. As this recent threat to free expression demonstrates, its being the current weapon of choice to silence social and political comment doesn’t bode well for the campaign to decriminalize libel, much less remove it altogether from the statute books.
Free expression is nice and it is important, but there are limits to it that must be respected.
I do not think that St. Scholastica actually “threatened” Pol Medina with imprisonment as it wasn’t in its power to impose that penalty. What it informed him it would do was its right to raise the matter to the courts, who do have that power, and who will decide whether the complaint has merit or not.
I think Carlos Celdran was grossly disrespectful and deserved to have been convicted for what he did. However, I do not understand why Medina resigned when the investigation was still ongoing and he had already issued an apology and promised to exercise self-censorship.
Tsk tsk. The things we dont want to hear are the things we need to heed.