I saw two kinds of saviors the first week of December. One was the Christmas Concert at UST with the UST Conservatory of Music student musicians under the helm of Prof. Herminigildo Ranera playing beautiful Christmas songs at Plaza Mayor on December 1, 2017 as the lights were turned on the university grounds. We were in celebration of the anniversary of the birth of Christ, the Savior of humanity.
It was highly exhilarating listening to musicians play Christmas songs because they were all Christians in the real sense -- believers of Jesus and hence, their musical performance permeated their souls, minds and hearts, not just physically. It is highly different when listening to musicians whose idea of performance is being glued to the score, playing according to the dictates of the composer, and yet not believing in the true import of the songs.
It was the 15th celebration with King of Kings as the theme to usher in the Christmas season. Sopranos included Thea Perez, who sang Payapang Daigdig, Elisana Cortes and Nennen Espina who sang 12 Days of Christmas. Abdul Candao who is Vienna-trained according to a faculty member, sang "O Holy Night" and I thought I had heard Pavarotti that night. He was full of reverence when he sang the song.
Naomi Sison meanwhile sang Light of A Million. There were children and other women and men singers in the whole show, coordinated by Dean Antonio Africa of the UST Conservatory of Music. A narrator said that the Conservatory now has 600 students and 73 Faculty members. Prof. Ranera who also conducts the PPO at CCP handles Composition, Conducting, Orchestration as well graduate classes which he handles with great ease and humour, a very nice approach to budding artists. Maybe that is why UST has a lot of students.
But what struck me about the Festival is that the Savior being celebrated was a real human being, who never pretended to be ultra strong but delivered many parables to emphasize the need for a moral life.
Unfortunately, when I saw Justice League, a movie with 5 heroes (with one woman) I just could not reconcile that idea of their being saviors of the world. The movie tries to make us believe that we have those real martyrs ready with their magical tricks to overcome evil in this world. The villains are not the real villains that we would see in the streets or in the seedy sections of our society. Instead, they are imaginative figures shaped by digital effects artists.
And now I really pity the American girl children who have to swallow a very fantastical image of a woman but who could not be a model of social responsibility at all as the whole story is concocted for movie delectation, and not a spiritual awakening to the need to love our neighbor, especially the needy, and for girls to have the courage to stand up and fight the evil forces in society. Besides, the costume of Wonder Woman is too sexually attractive and I don't see the point how the girl children could possibly see themselves as she is
Am I being cynical of sci-fi movies? Not really, but as this film had come during the Christmas season, it brings out a negative impact of the need to have a moral overhaul of our values where society is concerned. The movie is just for appreciation of how the producers had created a film that uses computer tricks and all the way through and nowhere is it possible to identify with any of the heroes and the heroine.
Maybe it is time to rewrite these sci-fi movies and make them credible as real saviors of the world. And please give us real enemies of the people, like those who subvert democratic processes and land as pretenders to the throne.
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