ANAK TV SEAL BY MAG CRUZ HATOL

ANAK TV SEAL
  By Mag Cruz Hatol
  
 
  (Column for 27 March 2006)
  
 
  
  QUESTIONABLE FUSS OVER MTRCB’S DECISIONS
 
  
  We could not help but suspect the real motives of this anti-pornography group that keeps surfacing every so often, decrying what they call the "inefficiency of the current MTRCB". Recently, they made noise about Oscar and Golden Globe winner Brokeback Mountain and Cassanova.
 
  The issues surrounding the said films were answered squarely by MTRCB through its chair, Marissa Laguardia, in fairly comprehensive stories that appeared in the major dailies. That should have silenced the alliance. That the now undermanned MTRCB was able to answer the allegations head-on showed that the agency is on top of the situation and is in fact, efficient. It cannot however be effective if ulterior-motived parties persist on shaking it up mindlessly.
 
  Lately, the same johnny-come-lately succeeded in using a few broadcast newsteams to get its stories and gripes on air. We checked what the ruse was all about this time. It was the same baloney, we discovered, except that it zeroed in on the movie Hostel and the observation that there is too much smut in print. (Wrong tree, we interject, because MTRCB has no jurisdiction over printed media!)
 
  It turns out Hostel was granted an R-13 rating. Asked why, Chair Laguardia explained to this column that it was the board as a collegial body and not herself alone as head of the agency that makes such determinations. We know the board has its feet firmly planted on terra firma. It also realizes that it is now the age of the iPod and 3G phones; that the age of Latin masses, carromatas and priests’ tonsures has been overtaken by more practical and acceptable alternatives. If Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Scarlet Fever were taboo a century or so ago, the current MTRCB board thinks there is leeway for a little guarded liberty, given the times and considering that the Pinoy is, after all, from an intelligent race and he is a generally responsible media user. To question the decision reached by the board is tantamount to doubting the integrity of the board and the soundness of its decisions. Paranoid elements in society could misconstrue the same as questioning the very office that
appointed the MTRCB board, the same authority that considers it to be the body that could act wisely and judiciously in matters such as Hostel in the first place!
 
  Lo and behold! It was also a surprise to learn from an insider in the Palace that the key person in the move to declare MTRCB inefficient has actually been worming his way into position and he has decided that it is the chairmanship, not just an empty board seat, that he is seriously after. And that the best way to get noticed is to pump out a lot of air, no matter how redundant the accusations are. This cry for more moral uprightness is therefore questionable and peculiar. (Colleagues immediately asked if the wannabe MTRCB chair also happened to be the unpopular priest who had been angling for the top spot by rocking the boat since the time of Armida Siguion Reyna and Nic Tiongson. Thankfully, the ambitious priest has acquiesced and must have accepted that he can only swing that post when the country becomes a theocracy.)
 
  Where does all this ridiculous hullabaloo figure in the campaign for responsible media?
 
  Many people agree that Brokeback Mountain, Cassanova and Hostel were given fair ratings. It is the MTRCB board’s, as well as Anak TV’s stance, that safeguarding morals should not and must not be the duty of one mere government agency, the church or the school. It should be the collective responsibility of everyone, so much like the African saying that reminds us about the entire village being expected to raise the child.
 
  Investing the role of moral guardianship on MTRCB alone would be preposterous and equivalent to asking MMDA to ensure that the metro’s streets are litter free and decongested. Surely, the citizens are expected to put in some amount of effort.
 
  If Hostel and the other films in question were given liberal ratings, it only meant that MTRCB wanted parents to join their kids, 13 years and above, in viewing and discussing the materials intelligently. The agency does not abnormally shield the youth from realities of modern life. MTRCB does not want to present an unnaturally chaste picture to our youth, who are only too familiar with sex and violence at even younger ages. Parents’ watching TV and movies with their kids is the ideal form of media literacy activity today because the mature and intelligent use of media should begin with the family, not with one’s peers.