Ajejeje Like a Sir: Biodiversity in the Philippine Jungle
I wrote this last sem for our Comm II class. The prof asked us to attend any event of the DAC in their, uh, DAC week and then write a reaction paper on it. My friends and I chose the Jologs Quiz Show.
I gotta say, it was funny as hell. It was so spontaneous and so laid back it felt like being in a comedy bar (although I’ve never been in one). The professors acted like students, laughing and doing stupid things, throwing handfuls of candy to immature, rather, kids-at-heart college students. The ppts of the questions even had pictures of jejemons sitting snugly on the corner of the slides.
SPEAKING OF THE QUESTIONS they were so hard. Like, really hard. There were questions like, “Sino ang atletang gumanap na isa sa mga tatay sa pelikulang ‘Tong Tatlong Tatay ‘Kong Pakitong Kitong?” Try answering that.
This is my reaction paper.
The Jologs Quiz Show of the Department of Arts and Communication was held on February 16 in celebration of Culture Week or, perhaps more appropriately, of the pop icon that is the Jejemon. But that might be only as far as their advertising strategies were concerned.
Contrary to what might have been expected, it did not make a mockery of the Jejemon: the quiz master did not ask the contestants to decipher Jejemon messages or to dress in baggy shorts and oversized shirts with basketball jerseys on top. It was not as much about the Jejemon, in fact, as it was about the Filipino masses in general. In other words, the quiz show was a tribute to the Filipino masses.
How important is this exactly?
The Jejemon rose to prominence because of their peculiar way of texting, becoming the topic of pop culture shows and the public’s annoyance. The learned middle-class and elite families found it particularly odd that a letter that should be typed in lowercase is typed as an uppercase letter, and found messages with more than ten punctuation marks per sentence very gruesome to read. As a result, these learned Filipinos found it necessary to profess disgust over such kind of language. As if to give credence to their college degrees, they saw the need to ridicule every typographical error they could notice in whatever the Jejemon typed. Despite this growing attention, needless to say, the Jejemon did not become famous but infamous.
The growth of Jejemon infamy is proof of the elitism that has gone viral among all Filipinos, testament to the judgement that one who is better in English is better in all ways than one who is less proficient. It follows then that one who is uneducated is inferior in all ways to the degree holder. What could this mean for the rest of the uneducated Filipinos, who comprise a significant part of the country’s population?
What perhaps most of us do not recognize is the significant role of the masses in shaping this country’s culture. Given that they are less susceptible to the effects of colonial mentality, what is inherently Filipino is less subjected to change – a good thing in this respect. The culture of being cheerful in the midst of family problems and national crises, of hospitality and of respect, is maintained. They are, therefore, not the symbol of this country’s ignorance. Great invaluable wisdom comes from them.
The Jologs Quiz Show is a celebration of the culture of the masses, as well as a signboard that reminds us Scholars of how important it is to understand the very people who we will be serving after we graduate; we cannot demean those who we serve. The masses, the middle class and the privileged are co-dependent institutions: one leads the other in different ways, no matter how modest or extravagant the fashion may be. And in the Philippine jungle, despite this biodiversity, we only have one another.
