Luxury porn and ‘nepo’ kids

This is a follow-up piece to last week’s “Sickening display of wealth porn” (8/29/25), on the Discaya family’s fleet of luxury cars displayed during separate interviews with two spellbound TV hosts. I was so disgusted, I couldn’t find stronger words. In his Aug. 29 homily, Caloocan Archbishop and outgoing president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, translated it into Filipino as “Nakakasukang paglalantad ng mahalay na karangyaan.” Apologies, he said, for not being able to find a better Filipino translation for porn. He used the word mahalay.

As owners of several companies that have snagged Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) infrastructure projects, flood control among them, the Discayas and many others are now under investigation. Mother Nature’s fury uncovered ghost and substandard flood control projects that put countless lives and livelihoods underwater. So did the sickening display of wealth that switched on alert buttons.

I did not have space last week to contextualize the word porn, short for pornography. The P word is usually associated with provocative and explicit sexual content in magazines and videos (also in text and audio formats) for the purpose of stimulation. It is psychologically harmful, if not addictive, for both young and old. Sample that orgiastic scene in Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut.”

The word “porn” is now used for other excessive and suggestive content that not only stimulates but also sickens. I first encountered the word porn used with food many years ago. It was not pejorative then, but merely suggestive of culinary feasts to titillate the sense of taste, sight and smell.

There is no study to prove that Filipinos are the most food-fixated people in the world, especially during the Christmas season. (The ber months are here!) But it is a fact that food (like music) is the Filipinos’ second language during feasts. Filipinos, economic status notwithstanding, are excessive in the food department. Someone did post an image of Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” with a table groaning with food juxtaposed on it. The caption: Jesus’ last supper with his apostles would look like that if Filipinos were the organizers. It was an irreverent take on a sacred event portrayed as bacchanalian.

Call me sanctimonious, but, yes, I do gag a bit when I see so much display on social media of tables laden with so much food. (I am not referring to food stylists and small online food sellers who deserve our support.) Some are bereft of aesthetic value because of both the visual and heart-stopping cholesterol overload. You can call that food porn in the negative sense.

But defined in a neutral way, food porn means portraying food in an artful, inviting way. An article I read said it was first used by feminist writer Rosalind Coward in her 1984 book “Female Desire,” and later used by food writers, but it took on a current meaning to refer to food photos galore shared on social media. How much can one take? There is a study on food ads’ subtle, exploitative effects on the mind, but that is another story.

If there is food porn, there is poverty porn. And it is during hard times that we get stark images of poverty on both social and mainstream media. Poverty porn, “also known as development porn, famine porn, or stereotype porn, has been defined as any type of media, be it written, photographed, or filmed, which exploits the poor’s condition in order to generate the necessary empathy for selling newspapers, increasing charitable donations or support for a given cause. It also suggests that the viewer of the exploited protagonists is motivated by the gratification of base instincts. It is also a term of criticism applied to films that objectify people in poverty for entertaining a privileged audience.” I’ve viewed a few of these and cringed.

See Also

Teachers’ voices

Now we come to luxury porn, which is being exemplified by those wallowing in wealth—ill-gotten or however—being flaunted on social media by so-called “nepo” kids (from the word nepotism), the offspring of nouveau riche parents. I thought I had said enough last week and was leaving the porn topic, but how can one look away? Showing off an intimate little dinner in a posh place for a few friends, costing three quarters of a million pesos? Signature bags, watches, etc., each one equivalent to the annual income of a daily wage earner? Red flags, ahoy! As I said last week, those with old money observe class etiquette and do not flaunt. A little black dress, a few pearls and a Manolo Blahnik pair are enough. Class versus crass. But, gee, thanks, nepo kids and their parents, for showing us what bad taste is.

Yesterday’s Inquirer banner story: “9 Discaya firms stripped of license as contractors,” even while immigration lookout bulletins are being prepared for plunderers and scoundrels, and top-to-bottom resignations are demanded of DPWH bureaucrats and personnel.

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