Native Ritual Puts Docu Program in Trouble

MTRCB suspends I-Witness for showing phallic symbols
Native Ritual Puts Docu Program in Trouble
By Evelyn Katigbak

IT WAS a risk and Howie Severino, I-Witness’s host and writer, knew it.
The Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB), the government censors agency, suspended GMA-7’s documentary program I-Witness for two consecutive episodes. MTRCB released its decision on June 29 (dated June 22), a month after the airing of Severino’s documentary, “Lukayo: Hindi Ito Bastos!”

In an interview with PJR Reports a week before the MTRCB announced the suspension of the program, Severino was still animated as he recalled the first time he saw Lukayo on video.

“It was very visual… (the wedding) was a very happy occasion,” he said.

A journalist for 18 years, Severino said he had wanted to do a documentary on the “unexplored side” of Ramon Obusan, 2006 National Artist for Dance. Severino had learned that the national artist has an extensive collection of Philippine dances on film and video. Also, Obusan has been doing his own documentaries since the 1960s.

The national artist allowed Severino and his I-Witness team to view his collection. “He’s a very generous man,” Severino described him.

Impressed by the collection, Severino watched the video materials. And then he saw the Lukayo video, a fertility dance ritual performed during weddings in a local town.

Crazy woman clown
The ritual (short for “luka-lukang payaso” or crazy woman clown) is performed by elderly women invited by couples to their wedding. These women are also called lukayo, from the phrase “luka-lukang payaso” or crazy woman clown.

The lukayos, dressed as clowns in exaggerated girly attires, hold phallic symbols of various sizes as they dance gleefully with and around the couple. It is their way of wishing the couple many children.

“Wow! These women are characters!” Severino recalled telling himself as he watched the lukayos on video. He then asked Obusan, “Do they still do this? Why don’t we go there for the next wedding?”

And Severino was not disappointed. Obusan still had his contacts in Kalayaan, Laguna.

I-Witness’s “Lukayo” episode was aired on May 22. Two Lukayos were documented in two separate wedding celebrations.

The lukayos were featured as they were dancing and playing with the phallic symbols. Each lukayo shows off her wooden male sex organ or eggplant, plays with it, and at times, thrusts it into another lukayo’s butt. Some of them also ask the bride to hold the phallic symbols. All were done in the spirit of celebration and joy.

On camera, Severino wished, “Sana may ganito rin sa kasal ko (I hope I had this for my wedding).”

The “Lukayo” episode also included interviews with the lukayos which showed what these women did when they were not performing the ritual. Nothing surprising. They did household chores. Many of them worked in the field. One was a barangay health volunteer, and another a worker in a local resort.

In one instance, Severino asked a lukayo whether her husband would get angry whenever she participated in a Lukayo.

With a laugh, the woman said, “Even if he gets angry, he is just small. I’m bigger than he is! He can’t stop me from doing it!”

Questioning assumptions
Even as they were working on the episode, Severino’s team knew they would offend some conservative sectors. “But we are not journalists to please people, right? We are here to educate,” Severino said.

He added, “In fact, I think our role is to disturb, to question assumptions.”

Not too many of the Filipinos know about this culture. The Lukayo would be something new to many viewers.

The Lukayo has anthropological, social, and political values. It is a ritual that has survived modern times primarily because the people, especially the women, have been actively preserving it. To Severino, women playing with phallic symbols—in a phallo-centric society—are making a political statement.

And then there is the entertainment value. Wearing colorful costumes as they gleefully dance, elderly women are a sight to behold as they go about their dance.

“We want people to think. We do not ask them to think like the way we are thinking, but just to think—to allow creeping doubts about social assumptions,” Severino explained.

Because the participants are old women, the ritual delivers a strong message. As Severino explained, elderly women are supposed to be the guardians of society’s moral compass. But if they are the ones doing the Lukayo, then there should be nothing obscene about it, the I-Witness host emphasized.

The MTRCB, however, thought otherwise.

Protect the public
On May 30, I-Witness received a sum-mons from the MTRCB. An administrative complaint had been filed against the program for violating Section 2, Chapter IV of the MTRCB Implementing Rules and Regulations. A hearing was set for June 6.

Section 2 of the MTRCB Rules deal with television classifications: General Patronage (“G”), Parental Guidance (“PG”) and Not for Viewing (“X”).

The Lukayo episode actually had a “PG” classification. But the MTRCB was questioning the scenes that “directly represent or clearly refer to sexual acts.” The MTRCB agents particularly noted the display of wooden sex organs and the use of eggs and eggplants to depict acts of masturbation.

Addressing the MTRCB’s concern, Severino in his affidavit said: “The Lukayo is danced by female senior citizens dressed as clowns and wearing wooden phalluses of exaggerated sizes. The phalluses are often painted in different colors. It would take a stretch of the imagination to assume that the broadcast of such a practice is intended to ‘appeal to the prurient interest’ of the viewing public or ‘satisfy a craving for gratuitous sex.’ Certainly, local officials in the small town where it is still practiced do not find the Lukayo a threat to local morals or public safety, even if children have been watching this tradition since time immemorial. Phallic customs such as this used to be practiced more widely in the Philippines. Today, the Lukayo is found only in several communities in the town of Kalayaan, Laguna.”

He further said, “The purpose of the documentary was not merely to honor (Obusan)… it was to shine a spotlight on one of the most important aspects of his work—his belief backed by over a thousand hours of film and video footage that deeply rooted in our culture are practices that may disturb modern-day sensibilities. But these were preserved through the ages by communities without malice and valued by rural folk for their relevance to daily life.”
The MTRCB required another position paper which I-Witness, through GMA-7’s legal department, submitted on June 16.

On June 29, the network received the MTRCB’s decision: I-Witness was being suspended for two consecutive episodes.

According to the MTRCB decision, showing male phalluses and the act of masturbation do not fall within the “G” and “PG” classification of the Board.

The MTRCB decision explained that the Board does not pass judgment over indigenous culture nor abhor centuries-old rituals, but when these “obscure” rituals are shown in television, “it is the primary duty of the Board to protect the viewing public.”

Asserting native culture
Nicanor Tiongson, former MTRCB chair and former dean of the University of the Philippines College of Mass Communi-cation, got a copy of I-Witness’s “Lukayo” episode and watched it twice. He told PJR Reports, “The context was very clear.”

A noted film scholar, Tiongson, said that Lukayo is “a native culture asserting itself against a Western-imposed culture.”

In the official statement released by the network, Obusan was quoted as saying, “I have witnessed many other traditional dances that used phalluses, these are important symbols used in both fertility and flagellation rituals.” According to him, the episode had no malice.

On July 3, GMA-7 filed a motion for reconsideration with the MTRCB.

Even before the suspension, Severino told PJR Reports, “The MTRCB complaint is a small price to pay compared to the awareness and education that I-Witness has provided its viewers.” n

(Note: As PJR Reports goes to press, it learned that the MTRCB shortened the suspension order to just one episode. It cited the “good faith” shown by the program in complying with the order.)

Evelyn Katigbak teaches journalism at the University of the Philippines. She is also a freelance writer for print and television.

Comments are closed.