The blossoms of revolutionary struggle
People's art and literature bloom out of the Filipinos' real daily life and experiences
by Marte Mirador
Liberation, August 1984
People's art and literature bloom out of the Filipinos' real daily life and experiences
by Marte Mirador
Liberation, August 1984
There are two main currents of art and literature existing side by side in a subdeveloped country like the Philippines. One results from the creative activity of artists and writers who cater to the "highbrow" aesthetics and "refined" sensibilities of the elite. The other is the product of artists and writers who identify themselves with, or who themselves sprung from the huge majority of Filipinos whose social, economic, political and cultural advancement they champion through their works.
Such dichotomy may hold true for the rest of the Third World, where gradations and extremes of opulence and poverty define the socio-economic spectrum and dramatize the daily human condition. In such a society, it is not unusual for one breed of artists and writers to strive for "universality" in an attempt to break out of or "transcend" harsh social realities by harping on "eternal verities" like "the true, good and beautiful," in the process abstracting themselves out of the overwhelming social context. This breed of artists and writers is often rewarded handsomely, if not through state recognition and sponsorship then through private patronage, a la Medici or Marcos (though the latter cheats by stealing awesomely from the people and giving to the famous and great what is passed off as royal largesse). Many times, such artists and writers dutifully reciprocate the favor by acting as purveyors of court art and literature, and as witting or unwitting glorifiers of the authoritarian regime.
On the other hand, there is the growing circle of artists and writers who pour out their creative energies into the crucible of struggle, forging weapons of criticism through art and literary works by which they would lay bare the social ills of their time, even playing the historian's role by tracing the root causes of social, economic and moral malaise through the ages, exposing the canker gnawing at the system - the malady common to Third World societies with a common legacy of colonial enslavement and neocolonial plunder.
We may call the first current as establishment art and literature, the second as people's art and literature. By establishment, we mean those that are not only being funded and financed by the state for cosmetic purposes, but also those that are being upheld, patronized or financed by the profligate elite. Creative works emanating from this culture-of-the-status-quo claim to be devoid of or "free from" any ideological content, are simply manifestations of individual genius and the bourgeois "Muse". Thus, in such art, we have various degrees of abstract expressionism, unintelligible to the "uninitiated" masses. Thus, in such literature, we have fiction and poetry and theater which hew closely to the bourgeois, intellectualist tradition (or belle lettre-ism) bereft of indigenous, nationalist, historical moorings. In a word, an art and literature of alienatedness.
People's art and literature include all creative works (painting, graphics, murals, sculptures, poems, stories, plays, films) that draw substance and content (and to a great extent, even their formal structures) from the people's traditional culture as well as from the all too real daily struggle for life of millions of Filipinos: peasants and plantation workers, factory laborers and peons, fishermen, miners, urban poor and dispossessed rural folk, oppressed women and neglected children, and many others. The central theme of people's art and literature is the struggle of these people against the evils spawned by the enduring legacy of centuries of colonial rule, expressed in the present complex of neocolonial realities such as feudal oppression, political tyranny, economic exploitation and military terrorism.
The primary goal of this art and this literature is the creation of a truly national and democratic culture that embodies the free spirit of inquiry, the freedom of creative expression built around the experiences of the great majority of the Filipino people. Unlike the individualist bourgeois concept of artistic freedom, however, this new spirit does not exist apart from the full sense of community and collective interest that, in ages past, characterized the life and livelihood and the arts of the people - a state of society long since subverted by modern relations of exploitation and domination characteristic of class society and the global capitalist ethic.
Where do we find people's art? We find it in the creative works of the revolutionary underground, in the form of artworks such as drawings, illustrations, paintings and cartoons accompanying political commentaries or heroic accounts, or those standing on their own as acerbic comments on the status quo. We also find it in the creative works existing in the open, in the country's urban centers, where art exhibits and art circles proliferate and where a significant group of socially conscious artists is crafting the first noteworthy generation of social realist art and revolutionary expressionism and symbolism. One of these artists once remarked that social realism may not always describe what they are doing, but that social criticism or, simply, revolutionary art, would. Bourgeois critics would dismiss socially critical art as so much "propaganda". Precisely: all art properly belongs to the great battlefield of culture, of ideas, of man's future, and this clash between theories of art and world views is to be expected.
Where do we find people's literature? We find it, likewise, in the revolutionary underground, in the form of poems written by guerrillas and workers and peasants and cultural workers from the petty bourgeoisie. A recent development is the rich harvest of countryside literature from those who, apparently, have succeeded in unleashing the creative spirit possessed by even "the simplest man". But there is, of course, no such thing as "simple man" (said of workers and peasants, for instance, who are expected to be capable only of manual toil and material production); there are only undeveloped potentialities, untapped human genius, trapped inside the "simple man" by the conditions of human labor and the restrictions of the system. People's literature is very evident in anti-landlord plays, written, scored, choreographed, produced, directed and acted in, collectively, by revolutionary cultural groups in the countryside, in which the peasants are not merely spectators but can become part of the performance. It is also found "above ground", as practiced by poets, fictionists, essayists, playwrights who, though they write from urban centers and university campuses and who may yet have to fully immerse themselves in the proletarian and peasant milieu they write about, express the profoundest solidarity with the majority of the Filipino people. They refuse to go the way of elitist writing and, worse, pro-regime bootlicking, as is the case with some well-known, much-awarded former progressive writers who have managed a foothold at the fringes of the dictatorship, from where they snatch with eager jaws the meaty bones and tasteful carcasses the Queen of Tarts may strew their way.
While people's art and literature by themselves cannot launch a social revolution for national liberation, they nevertheless are volatile, potent propellants which can fire up the hearts and minds of an entire people, motivating and strengthening them in their momentous march towards a better, more human and humane future.
Such dichotomy may hold true for the rest of the Third World, where gradations and extremes of opulence and poverty define the socio-economic spectrum and dramatize the daily human condition. In such a society, it is not unusual for one breed of artists and writers to strive for "universality" in an attempt to break out of or "transcend" harsh social realities by harping on "eternal verities" like "the true, good and beautiful," in the process abstracting themselves out of the overwhelming social context. This breed of artists and writers is often rewarded handsomely, if not through state recognition and sponsorship then through private patronage, a la Medici or Marcos (though the latter cheats by stealing awesomely from the people and giving to the famous and great what is passed off as royal largesse). Many times, such artists and writers dutifully reciprocate the favor by acting as purveyors of court art and literature, and as witting or unwitting glorifiers of the authoritarian regime.
On the other hand, there is the growing circle of artists and writers who pour out their creative energies into the crucible of struggle, forging weapons of criticism through art and literary works by which they would lay bare the social ills of their time, even playing the historian's role by tracing the root causes of social, economic and moral malaise through the ages, exposing the canker gnawing at the system - the malady common to Third World societies with a common legacy of colonial enslavement and neocolonial plunder.
We may call the first current as establishment art and literature, the second as people's art and literature. By establishment, we mean those that are not only being funded and financed by the state for cosmetic purposes, but also those that are being upheld, patronized or financed by the profligate elite. Creative works emanating from this culture-of-the-status-quo claim to be devoid of or "free from" any ideological content, are simply manifestations of individual genius and the bourgeois "Muse". Thus, in such art, we have various degrees of abstract expressionism, unintelligible to the "uninitiated" masses. Thus, in such literature, we have fiction and poetry and theater which hew closely to the bourgeois, intellectualist tradition (or belle lettre-ism) bereft of indigenous, nationalist, historical moorings. In a word, an art and literature of alienatedness.
People's art and literature include all creative works (painting, graphics, murals, sculptures, poems, stories, plays, films) that draw substance and content (and to a great extent, even their formal structures) from the people's traditional culture as well as from the all too real daily struggle for life of millions of Filipinos: peasants and plantation workers, factory laborers and peons, fishermen, miners, urban poor and dispossessed rural folk, oppressed women and neglected children, and many others. The central theme of people's art and literature is the struggle of these people against the evils spawned by the enduring legacy of centuries of colonial rule, expressed in the present complex of neocolonial realities such as feudal oppression, political tyranny, economic exploitation and military terrorism.
The primary goal of this art and this literature is the creation of a truly national and democratic culture that embodies the free spirit of inquiry, the freedom of creative expression built around the experiences of the great majority of the Filipino people. Unlike the individualist bourgeois concept of artistic freedom, however, this new spirit does not exist apart from the full sense of community and collective interest that, in ages past, characterized the life and livelihood and the arts of the people - a state of society long since subverted by modern relations of exploitation and domination characteristic of class society and the global capitalist ethic.
Where do we find people's art? We find it in the creative works of the revolutionary underground, in the form of artworks such as drawings, illustrations, paintings and cartoons accompanying political commentaries or heroic accounts, or those standing on their own as acerbic comments on the status quo. We also find it in the creative works existing in the open, in the country's urban centers, where art exhibits and art circles proliferate and where a significant group of socially conscious artists is crafting the first noteworthy generation of social realist art and revolutionary expressionism and symbolism. One of these artists once remarked that social realism may not always describe what they are doing, but that social criticism or, simply, revolutionary art, would. Bourgeois critics would dismiss socially critical art as so much "propaganda". Precisely: all art properly belongs to the great battlefield of culture, of ideas, of man's future, and this clash between theories of art and world views is to be expected.
Where do we find people's literature? We find it, likewise, in the revolutionary underground, in the form of poems written by guerrillas and workers and peasants and cultural workers from the petty bourgeoisie. A recent development is the rich harvest of countryside literature from those who, apparently, have succeeded in unleashing the creative spirit possessed by even "the simplest man". But there is, of course, no such thing as "simple man" (said of workers and peasants, for instance, who are expected to be capable only of manual toil and material production); there are only undeveloped potentialities, untapped human genius, trapped inside the "simple man" by the conditions of human labor and the restrictions of the system. People's literature is very evident in anti-landlord plays, written, scored, choreographed, produced, directed and acted in, collectively, by revolutionary cultural groups in the countryside, in which the peasants are not merely spectators but can become part of the performance. It is also found "above ground", as practiced by poets, fictionists, essayists, playwrights who, though they write from urban centers and university campuses and who may yet have to fully immerse themselves in the proletarian and peasant milieu they write about, express the profoundest solidarity with the majority of the Filipino people. They refuse to go the way of elitist writing and, worse, pro-regime bootlicking, as is the case with some well-known, much-awarded former progressive writers who have managed a foothold at the fringes of the dictatorship, from where they snatch with eager jaws the meaty bones and tasteful carcasses the Queen of Tarts may strew their way.
While people's art and literature by themselves cannot launch a social revolution for national liberation, they nevertheless are volatile, potent propellants which can fire up the hearts and minds of an entire people, motivating and strengthening them in their momentous march towards a better, more human and humane future.
