Saturday, February 25, 2012

Lies Mothers Tell

Scene 1: Bambi is chased by savage hunters into the forest. His mother asks him to run as fast and as far as he could. The hunters then catch up to his mother and takes her down. Bambi is safe, but without a mother.


Scene 2: Little Foot wanders off and somehow wakes up the flesh-eating tyrannosaurus rex. “Mama Longneck” tries to fight the T-Rex. She is somehow successful in saving her son, but failed to overcome the gashes from the T-rex attack. Little foot is safe, but without a mother.


Scene 3: Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago (from the pro-RH Bill corner) challenges Congressman Manny Pacquiao (anti-RH Bill) to a fist fight, saying that the Congressman has a mistaken understanding of what certain biblical verses actually mean. Mommy Dionesia, mother of the Congressman and pound-for-pound king, retaliates at Senator Santiago and defends her son:
“Para kay Senator Miriam, parang binasura niya ang anak ko… bakit mababa ang tingin niya sa anak ko? Si Manny, sinusunod lang ang utos ng Diyos.”
Manny is safe.


Scene 4: Ruffa Guttierez gets “bullied” by Kris Aquino. At some point, on national TV, Aquino makes an inappropriate comment on Guttierez’s plans on transferring to a rival station. Ruffa walks out of their show and, moments later, Annabelle Rama, her feisty mother, lashes out on Aquino by making statements on the other channel.
"Bakit hindi ka (Ruffa) lumalaban kay Kris? Sino ba siya? Alam mo, Pia, hindi maganda ang ginagawa ni Kris kay Ruffa. Hindi pa nga nananalo si Noynoy as presidente, ang yabang-yabang na niya. What more pa kaya kung mananalo si Noynoy?"

Ruffa is safe (see article).

What do all four scenes have in common? They all show a mother’s natural tendency to protect her young. It’s an instinct we share with our friends from the animal kingdom.

My juxtaposition of these scenes is not without purpose and such purpose is not for mere amusement (or a chuckle or two). On the one hand, a mother’s unconditional love and care, as admirable as they are, is every child’s salvation. The flipside is the same love, when it becomes exaggerated and too unconditional, is any child’s downfall. The latter, in my opinion, gives a child the mistaken belief that he/she is beautiful, handsome, intelligent, all that, or, maybe, just plain perfect.

Presently in the mainstream is this ISP commercial:



The mom goes out of her way, even setting her alarm to an unholy hour in the middle of the night, just so she could load his son’s uploaded video on YouTube, thereby increasing the number of views. When it reaches a hundred, the son tells her proudly about this little feat of his, not knowing that most, if not all, views were spuriously made by his own mother. His bravado is, nonetheless, bumped to the next level. He starts believing that he has become a star. A star he indeed is. But only to his supportive mother.

The Anna Banana video is actually real and was made by a young boy to impress a girl in his class. The TVC featuring it, though, is only a (fictional) portrayal of the same boy and his video. I have come to hate it not really because of the annoying lyrics, but because of how the mother “lied” to her son. Her son was happy and more confident, yes, but because of what…a lie?

This TVC may just be a simple “white lie”, but when you think about it, it shows the same motivation Marlene Aguilar had for her son, Jason Ivler, a suspect in a killing incident, when she told the authorities that she had no idea where her son had gone after the incident. A few days later, the police raided Marlene Aguilar’s residence, subsequently finding her murder-suspect son hiding in the basement (like a rat). See article. Still a mother’s genuine love? Maybe. Just a white lie? I think not.


A mother couldn’t really help but saying that her baby is the “cutest baby in the world”. For all we know, that might be true. Mostly, though, as Ramon Bautista had said, it’s just “false adverstising”.

Ma. Eliza Christine Gomez, Entry #10

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