Guanlao, Moira Kelly C.

BAIS 4A

BOOK REVIEW: Masculinity, Media and their Publics in the Philippines

By: Rueben Ramas Canete
Not only a genuine author about media and expounding about the present situative
Philippines and its beauty of art, Dr. Reuben Ramas Canete found his research interest in
museum studies, visual anthropology, cultural policy and political aesthetics, intercultural
studies, contemporary asian and diasporic cultures.He graduated with a Bachelors
Degree in Fine Arts Major in Painting, from the college of Fine Arts and Design,
University of Santo Tomas; MA in Art History at the Department of Art Studies, College
of Arts and Letters (CAL), University of the Philippine (UP) Diliman; and a Ph.D in
Philippine studies at the Tri-College Program, also in UP Diliman. He is currently
Associate Professor at the Department of Art Studies, CAL, UP Diliman.
Dr. Reuben Ramas Canetes book, Masculinity, Media and their Publics in the
Philippines is focused on different media accounts that demotes changes in the society.
The selected essays in his book includes, Post- EDSA homoerotic film, Bench bulletin
promotions, the UP Oblation and the UP Babaylan organization and about Manny
Pacquiao, the selective essays focuses on the masculinity and how media contemplates
with it here in the Philippines.
Philippine masculinity is said to be argued upon three and a half centuries since the
Spanish rule, the problematic issue about the gazing men is culturally, historically and is
the cause of colonialism and imperialism. In the imperial age, the military shaped society
to suit its peculiar needs. Modem armies are complex, costly institutions that must be
widely to mobilize the vast human and material resources their operations require. Since
the armed forces demand the absolute obedience and at times, the lives of ordinary males,
the state often forms, or reforms, society's culture and ideology to make military service a
moral imperative. In the cultural encounter that was empire, colonial armies proved as
surprisingly potent agents of social change, introducing a major Western institution, with
imbedded values, in a forceful, almost irresistible, manner. As powerful, intrusive
institutions, modem armies transformed cultures and shaped gender identities, fostering
rhetoric and imagery whose influence has persisted long after colonial rule.
In his book, Dr. Rueben Canete emphasize the metro sexual issue here in the
Philippines, The Macho Machine, re-envisioning the macho and its masculinity in the
Philippine Visual Culture. J Neil Garcia stated that there simply exists an immense and
incommensurable need for Filipino Masculinity to define itself against feminine
identities, in the glimpse of it, in order to maintain itself, indeed there is a need of the out
most masculinity appearance that mirrors the identities exist alongside of the society. In
the Philippine cinema, gone are days of the bad boy street tough cowboy of the golden
age of the Philippine media during the fifties and seventies has been replaced in the new
millennium by a working and professional class young men with a complex
psychological, sexual, and social status, and imbued with a new softer, more considerate
attitude among both women and gays.

This is the new metro sexual, it is also characterized by a diverse range of talents like
singing, acting and even modeling. Metro sexual is known to be a straight male who is
more sensitive or in touch on his feminine side. Metro sexual men loves his urban
lifestyle and narcissistic in nature that is influenced by whatever they see in magazines
and advertising. Due to modernization men are becoming sensitive to their appearance
they want to become more attractive to the eyes of others; they tend to judge how they
look and what they would look like to be. Being vain is not being gay. Its just today,
modern men have been more stylish, glamorous and self-conscious and being who they
are. Maybe its just they want to establish themselves in the society as elegant and
respected. Mark Simpson once quoted, "Contrary to what you have been told, metro
sexuality is not about flip-flops and facials, man-bags or manscara, or about men being
'girlie' or 'gay'.
Another essay that Dr. Reuben Ramas Canete stressed out in his book Masculinity,
Media and their Publics in the Philippines, shows about the queer publics and their
perception about the Oblation that is known to be originated in the University of the
Philippines. The study about it runs through the ethnographic of the consumers of the
Oblation that was first inaugurated at University of the Philippines, Manila Campus that
was held in November 30, 1935. Over the decades the oblation already migrated, spread
and applied in the different campuses of the system in the University of the Philippines.
The act of heroic sacrifice against foreign aggression has been transformed into a means
of liberating generations of Filipinos from all forms of oppression, through the iconic
pose and location of Guillermo Tolentinos sculpture, the Oblation, within the University
of the Philippines campus. It encompasses the ideas, philosophies, and genealogy of this
statue from the turn of the century to the present, combining approaches in anthropology,
art history, political science, and literary theory in fleshing out the various meanings and
implications of this pose. The demand of this iconic event and statue lead to the various
consumers within or outside the campus, organizations that imposes consumer profile on
their lives and mindsets of the members founded UP Babaylan that accepts members
coming from the LGBT community. The reinforcement is catered by the organizational
logo that depicts the Oblation as a re-embodiment of the organizational advocacy for the
equal rights of the UP-identified LGBT community, this even lead to creating pride
march among the students and the free willing people that looks upon and partake in this
advocacy. The lives, thoughts and daily basis of beliefs are therefore contingent upon the
realizations of their preferred sexes as a formerly suppressed and now oppressed,
ridiculed social minorities who, through the empowering and liberating space was able to
transform their subjection from mere passive receptors of hegemonic hetero sexist
masculine discourse to active negotiators and interjects who critique and question the
dogmas of social normative and sex gender in its natural forms.
The media surrounds us; from the shows we watch on television and the music we
listen to on the radio, to the books, magazines and newspapers that we read each day.
Without the media, we, the people in society, would be cut off from the rest of the world
which include governing bodies, law-makers, and neighboring towns and cities. The flow
of information is important for the expansion of communities and the media aids this.
Without a wide range of information, people's opinions and views would be bounded and
their impressions and assumptions of the world around them, exploited. Though media is
not the only communication means used to distribute the flow of information, its
significance in developed countries is worth mentioning as it is the main source of

informing the people on political issues or current affairs. It is also one of the chief
foundations of entertainment.