* I’m seriously concerned that you seem to be playing favorites among our top movie icons. I’m referring in particular to your open preference for Nora Aunor and lack of support for Vilma Santos. Even on this thread you admitted admiration for Sharon Cuneta, so that makes your silent treatment with regard to Vilma more obvious. I know that critics have to be up-front about their biases, but how can you maintain objectivity by praising one artist but not her rival?
I’d like to point out, with as little condescension as I could muster, how appreciative I am of your query. To be honest, I read it word for word a few times over, and it must be the only writing sample of its kind: a Vilmanian who doesn’t seem to harbor any racist bias against Nora Aunor. Yes, I did go there, inasmuch as I’d been telling friends these past several years that I intend to point out the toxicity that infests fan appreciations of good old Ate Vi. Just visit any of her Facebook pages or blog fansites and search for any reference to Nora, or look for major news valorizing Ate Guy where a Vilma fan feels like trolling her admirers. You don’t even have to tolerate the usual miseducated insensible enthusiast. Ask who the Vilmanians are among multi-awarded artists or name academicians or authors, schedule an exchange with them, and see how racist bile eventually starts spewing out of them.
11011I remember mentioning, in criticizing the first presidential rejection of Nora Aunor’s nomination to the Order of the National Artist, how she and Vilma embodied a defiance of the Euro fair-skinned preference that the studio system of the First Golden Age promoted. What’s ironic here is that Aunor, as the darker-skinned yet more popular entrant, obviously led the way for the likes of Oriental types like Santos to follow. But that should be a matter for a more intensive interrogation into our culture’s horrifically fundamental(ist) tendencies, which I’ll admit to being unprepared to pursue at the moment.
11011I did mention the National Artist prize though, which I think is the source of all this ongoing attention on the Vi-vs.-Guy rivalry. So we might as well foreground the issue. I don’t really count myself as prejudiced in favor of or against any artist – in fact I remember voting for Vilma more than once in some of those competitions that she seems to relish more than most other people including even Nora herself. She also has several films listed in the decade-plus-long canon project I’ve been working on, although if you compile my mini-reviews of her films and compare them to Nora’s, you’ll be able to track the point where their rivalry started out as a well-matched race, with Vilma often enjoying the upper hand. Then Nora overtook her as well as everyone else and decided to focus on maintaining artistic primacy, while Vilma won more local critics’ prizes and triumphed mainly as a well-loved star, even in her public-service phase.
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11011I don’t think any genuine performing-arts expert will be able to deny Nora’s supremacy, regardless of whatever recognition she may or may not have acquired, the National Artist Award included. Insider allegations about a certain influential elderly critic’s bias against her (which he opportunistically reversed when her rise in prestige seemed unstoppable) seem to be gaining traction and will have a far longer way to go, if karmic justice will manage to have its way. In the meanwhile, it would help clarify matters for Vilma fans if we distill the process of how any aspirant gets selected for the honor. For better or worse, the success of a nominee hinges on the assent of her or his peers, a procedure that any serious academician (like yours truly) would be all too familiar with. This accounts for the several instances this millennium in which the final approbatory authority, the Philippine President, wound up at odds with the experts who forwarded their lists of endorsements. The one time that the Supreme Court had to intervene, the members predictably sided with that aspect of the process that underwent peer validation.
11011How does this square with the Vilmanian drive to get the Order bestowed on Santos? All I can observe from my vantage point is a strategy of noise-making, often heightened to hysterical Nora-bashing proportions by whoever happen to be the movers and shakers of, who knows, possibly Ralph Recto-Santos or his minions. Literal evidence of passing the peer-review process would be any article published in any sufficiently credible peer-reviewed journal, the way that several on Nora Aunor, on all the other National Artist winners, and even a number on Sharon Cuneta can be marshaled as proof of their cultural noteworthiness. Book chapters won’t possess the same valuation hereabouts, especially in an academic culture that still has to attain sufficient competence in university press review.
11011I might as well bring up my own personal experience on this matter, as further proof of why I don’t really feel too affected about the question of maintaining objectivity in this case. About a decade ago, Kritika Kultura, the country’s (and region’s) premiere humanities and literature journal, acceded to my proposal to edit a special forum on Nora Aunor, which serendipitously preceded by a few weeks President PNoy Aquino’s severely criticized refusal to proclaim Aunor a National Artist. The response to the call for articles was overwhelming, not surprisingly, although nearly all the submissions were (also unsurprisingly) hagiographic or polemical in arguing in favor of Aunor as deserving of the award. When these essentially fan submissions weren’t upgraded by their respective authors to peer-reviewable articles, I requested the journal editors to expand the forum topic coverage, from Aunor to Philippine stardom in general. Thereafter I got potentially publishable drafts on Cuneta and Judy Ann Santos and one more performer which unfortunately couldn’t endure the admittedly stringent review process. But above and beyond awaiting specific submissions, I actually identified academicians – in Metro Manila and way beyond, including other islands and countries – known for their admiration of Vilma Santos, and nagged them or got their close friends to ensure that they provided article drafts. Every single one of them eventually pleaded to be excused because of busy schedules.
11011Was there something about our Ate Vi that seemed to preclude scholarly discourse? I attempted a theoretical exercise afterward, but I simply couldn’t formulate a useful argument about her, ironically because she seemed (to me at least) to be too perfect to be problematized. Whether this is the reason why her own scholarly admirers hit a blank wall themselves is not as major a concern for me as several other cultural matters I have to attend to. And just to close this particular exchange, let’s circle back to Vilma’s only remaining historical claim of superiority to Nora: her record number of critics’ trophies. That same circle of critics crows constantly about being ensconced in Philippine academia, so wouldn’t the real question be obvious enough to anyone at this point? As supposed peers, they passed judgments over Aunor in favor of Santos more times than most observers felt would be justifiable. Instead of asking me how I could be objective in handling the differences between these two celebrity performers, which I’ve more than adequately answered already, how about we ask them where their credible scholarly defense of the awards they dispensed favoring Santos can be found? [Posted June 2024]
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