From A Great Height

My friend says we’re like the dinosaurs,
Only we are doing ourselves in
Much faster than they ever did.
- Porno For Pyros

Some of the most distinct features in the Makati Business District are its underpasses, those subterranean tunnels into which you let yourself be sucked whenever you want to cross a street. Now the underpasses could have taken on an otherworldly character, something along the lines of Alice’s rabbit hole – after all, there is something enchanting about the very fact of their presence (the citizens’ taxes are going somewhere!), and there’s something equally awesome about the brisk efficiency exemplified in those walkways; you see all these corporate yahoos proceeding in this no-nonsense pace, checking their watches, flicking the sweat off their brows, and doing the macarena.

Ah, those yuppies.

To tell you the truth, none of them ever do the macarena. I just wanted to insert that because I can’t stand a lot of corporate yahoos, largely because I envy them for their fat wallets and their stunted perspectives. Am I being judgmental here? I don’t give a damn! I’m poor and I have every right to be judgmental!

Back to what I was saying. The underpasses have incredible potential for what you would, in a moment of sentimentality, call magic. You walk into one and you almost feel this strange roiling in your chest, a sensation that feels suspiciously like that old villain, Hope. This country may be on to something, you think, the peso is really on a roll, and maybe Gael Garcia Bernal secretly wants to have my babies. You’re pandering to your other delusions until –

- the heat and trapped humidity in the underpass collide into you like a fireball, KABLAMM, exactly like that. You’re still reeling from the force when another assault comes at you. It is the:

Attack

Of

The

Retard

Ad.

I usually don’t mind ads too much. Well-crafted campaigns can be extremely entertaining, and they can be great conversation fillers when your date with Ginoong Tae isn’t faring very nicely. For some incalculable reason, though, the underpasses peppered all over the Makati Business District are lined by some really retarded ads, of the kind that screams low-budget and a sordid lack of imagination.

Or perhaps I’m being too harsh. But take this ad I saw, for example. Probably for a food court in the area, it depicted a yuppie couple cuddling in the middle of the establishment, an open laptop gleaming into their faces. From the looks of it, they’re thoroughly enjoying what the laptop is showing them, maybe live updates on the stock exchange, Nasdaq, or whatever it is that gives yuppies a monster hard-on. I wouldn’t know.

The only problem with the ad is one glaring omission from the scene. If this is a plug for a food court, where in god’s name is the damn food? The message communicated seems to be this: Go to our food court with your laptop and your lady love, do some surfing and canoodling, and we’ll make you happy. Still, the question is elbowing us in the ribs: where’s the chow? And isn’t that yuppie couple famished at all?

Look at that beauty!

Maybe they’re not looking at stock exchange updates, maybe they’re rifling through pictures of pot roast and pizza. Crispy Pata or Sinigang. Or maybe steak. It’s lunchtime, their bellies are brewing up a revolution, but what do they do? They’re just sitting there, staring goggle-eyed at that laptop and not buying any food! Is it any wonder that the ad deserves to be called a Retard Ad? I’ll bet the bozos who made it can’t even tie their own shoelaces or do simple arithmetic – they’re that asinine.

And if you think about it, a lot of billboards go for the same effect: some couple or a group of folks having the time of their lives, bizarrely delighted, but with the product itself nowhere to be seen. I mean, honestly. I’d like to know what’s making them so goddamn ecstatic, I want to be let in on the joke that’s making such a huge difference in their puny lives.

Oh, but you’re going to say that these ads are supposed to sing to the escapist in each of us, to the obstinate impulse to scoot from the dreary marshes of daily living. Here’s a cheerful pair of yuppies in a food court, you’ll say, and that should pacify you momentarily, a salve for your bruises.

But the ruse doesn’t work, you know? I’m tired of all these messages couched in the syrupy language of cheap satisfaction. I want you to give me what I need to know, I want the thorny truth, the sort that can bring you to your knees with one ruthless, unequivocal blow. Otherwise, it’s all talk. And god knows we already got enough of that flying around.
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