Hypocrisy at its Finest in Boracay!

Agence France-Presse reported that “authorities may ban sex on the world-famous beaches of Boracay island after a television crew filmed two naked couples making out in public on New Year’s Day...

The clip showed one pair apparently having sex on the beach and the other locked in a passionate kiss in the water, with the woman’s bare breasts clearly shown above the waterline. The ABS-CBN television network said that it filmed the apparently Western couples at 2 a.m. on New Year’s Day after a large beachside party on the island to usher in 2011.


“We’re thinking of a ‘no sex on the beach’ [rule] so the other tourists would not be scandalized,” John Yap, the mayor of Malay town that has jurisdiction over Boracay, told ABS-CBN during an interview posted on its website this week...

During a brief telephone call with Agence France-Presse also on Thursday, Yap confirmed the quotes. Filipino film star and talk show television host Ruffa Gutierrez, who said that she was vacationing with her two young children in Boracay over the New Year, expressed disgust at the holiday makers’ over-exuberance...

Hypocrisy at its Finest in Boracay!

We all know that Ruffa Gutierrez was the subject of a Philippine Senate inquiry on “Brunayukis”. She was allegedly one of the frequent “guests” of one of the playboy Sultans of Kingdom of Brunei. Ruffa was also allegedly instrumental in the manoeuvrings of the uncovered Metro Manila Film scam. Since when did this Ruffa suddenly become a moralist?

The Get Real Philippines blog (http://getrealphilippines.blogspot.com/) has this to say about the Boracay brouhaha:

Oh the horrors! People caught making out and having sex on the beaches of Boracay! ABS-CBN News for the first time beat the Catholic Bishops in the game of huffing and puffing about sin and scandal in its "exclusive" report on Boracay beach debauchery caught on video. Star of 1996 sexploitation film Ang pinakamagandang hayop sa balat ng lupa Ruffa Gutierrez also chimed in...
"Bilang Pinay I'm still very conservative, ayaw ko naman gawin ng mga anak ko yun one day...for me that's just not right [...]"

Quite an ironic position to take, considering that Gutierrez appears half-naked in most of the scenes in which she appears in that 1996 movie which, by the way, is set -- where else -- on the beach!

But the real question one might think of asking the producers of ABS-CBN is this:

What were a bunch of people doing sneaking around in the dark pointing video cameras at people to begin with?

Obviously, ABS-CBN is not above a bit of sexploitation itself, splashing these "scandal" videos (a genre of film making Filipinos are renowned for) all over its network of media outlets in the guise of it being a "news report". Moreover, it makes use of a rather sneaky literary device -- juxtaposing morality mongering with its sex-charged content.

This is a feature of the Filipino character which I highlight in my book, specifically in this excerpt:
In her article "Between Sensationalism and Censure" (Philippine Journalism Review, April 2002, pages 35-37), Diana Mendoza observed how the bizarreness of Filipinos' regard for sexuality is reflected in Philippine cinema. Her observations are gleaned from among others, comments made by sociology professor Michael Tan of the University of the Philippines in the Sixth International congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific held in Melbourne, Australia from the 5th to the 10th October 2001:

Commenting if the Philippines could be at the forefront of education on sex and sexuality Tan said no, because "media have very sensational coverage but they still have this patina of moralism which is strange." He said this brims over to the film industry that churns out movies carrying the "crime and punishment" theme -- for instance, movies with pots of adultery that run steamy sex scenes but which towards the end, mandate that the adulterer, who is always the female, gets shot or imprisoned.

"With these endings, movies become a morality play after two hours of titillation," he said.

Furthermore:
Tan said Filipino movies also carry the "crime and redemption" theme, in which a sex worker eventually realizes there is a better life outside prostitution, but only after the audience [have] been treated to several sexual episodes.

More disturbing than simply being uncomfortable is how inconsistent and misguided Filipino responses to issues of sexuality can get. The Filipino Male enjoys the better half of a double standard that prevails in Philippine society. And this is what contributes much to the bizarreness of Filipinos' regard for sex.

Ain't Filipinos such class acts? Even in the act of high-nosed moralising, we still come across as the ethically-disturbed primitivist people that we are.