Mythmaking, dishonesty, and politicians (2)
As a cultural anthropologist, I have studied some aspects of various cultures, especially in societies where I have done substantial immersion, observing and participating in some cultural events and special occasions. The culture bearers of the communities I have visited—both as a researcher and social development worker— always narrate stories they have heard from their elders, which they believe had been handed down to them by their ancestors. Many of the stories may not have historical provenience and seem to be typical tall stories that glorify certain cultural icons that each group of families considers their progenitor. Like Greek mythology, these narratives have shaped our beliefs about some immortal powers beyond us, acting to regulate human behavior in many ways.
In a way, Greek myths provided a template for modern-day religions, especially in the concept of a two-sided conception of a God—a benevolent and a punitive one. Such world views depended so much on whether you follow or defy the will of the “gods” or “goddesses.”
My first theory in Anthropology course made me encounter ancient myths considered as among the foundations of modern-day religions. One of them is the classic ”The Golden Bough” written by Scottish anthropologist Sir James George Frazier as early as 1890. While its influence in anthropological studies in many parts of the world has been substantial, many of its sources have been discredited to have been lacking in accurate historical evidence. At one time, its publication caused a stir as it insinuated pagan origins of some of Christianity’s main tenets, accusing its writer of having “agnostic” views of some articles held sacred by Christians, like the concept of the “lamb of God.”
However speculative it was, it gave me an introduction to studying ancient narratives or myths as something “invented” among human societies to explain some deeper meanings of the human condition.
Mythmaking therefore is inventing or reinventing reality to ensure that those who get socialized in it will believe in it and take it as the truth about their faith. Weaving such stories and how they rationalize human existence and concepts related to our daily lives, and the existence of a power higher than all of us – this is considered mythmaking.
But such type of mythmaking aims to create a more “harmonious” or cohesive human society, regulating human behavior to prevent the escalation of minor irritants to full-scale violent communal conflicts.
The modern world and its advanced technology have paved the way for modern-day mythmaking—creating an alternative reality or ”truth” to sanitize what some greedy politicians have done to access political power and fame.
One of these is the 1965 film, “Iginuhit ng Tadhana” (Drawn by Fate), a biopic about Ferdinand Edralin Marcos and his journey toward becoming a notable personality in Philippine national politics. One reviewer of the film considers it the “most essential document of the popular mythmaking of Marcos Sr., with a storyline that characterized his and his family’s struggle for him to ascend to the highest office in the country. It narrated some embellished accounts of how he successfully defended himself from being accused of the murder of Julio Nalundasan while still an undergraduate law student and his victorious exploits during the Second World War.
The film was based on a largely glorified narration of Marcos Sr.’s life story, a biography written by Hartzell Spence, “For Every Tear a Victory,” published in 1964. Spence’s biography was largely hagiographic as it idealized its subject, weaving a story of how the elder Marcos had “won more medals for bravery than anyone else in Philippine history and had suffered the heroic Battle of Bataan and its aftermath, the infamous Death March, and the medieval tortures of the Japanese secret police.”
Over the years of their exile, the Marcos family did not lose time to try to sanitize their image as the family of a dictator, being referred to as the family of “The Conjugal Dictatorship” (Primitivo Mijares, 1976). This was done through painstaking public relations type of “rebranding” as Marcos Jr. allegedly asked a global public relations consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, to do it for them.
“Rebranding” is also another way of mythmaking, transforming negative images of a family into a pleasant, more acceptable one. It embeds an alternative version of the truth through messages that idealize the subject of the rebranding, making them victims of a historical event, rather than the perpetrators.
Rebranding to sanitize one’s reputation is an act of gross dishonesty, something only avaricious politicians do to access sustained political power.
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