‘NOEL” is Noel Volante, with a PhD in the field of communications. He was a student of mine way back. An accomplished academic in his own right.
One afternoon, across the table in front of me, Noel gave out an audible sigh: “I am really tired of listening to these presidential candidates.”
What do you make of them, I asked Noel. That safe afternoon, across the table, on my laptop, appeared his e-mail.
Listen to what he calls his two-cent worth of words as a communication specialist:
“[Rodrigo R.] Duterte leads because of the underdog approach,” Noel writes me.
To Noel, “[Grace] Poe is the ‘packaging’ expert” who “appeals to emotion.” Poe does this, according to Noel, by the use of “modulation technique,” referring to how the candidate employs her voice in various tonalities. Noel says that, “in the end, if she wins, she should thank her acting and voice coaches.” Noel clarifies: “When I say packaging, it does not necessarily mean what’s inside the package is as good as the packaging.”
Noel then talks next about Manuel A. Roxas II, who is described as a victim of what we call “narcotizing dysfunction,” a communication principle that explains how we become desensitized to things that we have been hearing all around us, even as the reality about those things seems different. He says Roxas’s handlers should learn to repackage him and his statements.
Regarding Jejomar C. Binay, Noel grabs a communication construct to make sense of this person. He describes Binay as “the master of inoculation.” He articulates this concept as part of a “communication principle that lets us see what the person just wants us to see.” Noel adds this parenthetical statement: See Makati and see my presidency. Of course, Noel stresses, the person can be hiding those things he is not asking us to see. Noel ends the description of Binay’s technique by saying: Visualize the horses with blinders.
Miriam Defensor-Santiago, for this ardent communications teacher, is still a product of the old school of rhetoric, a tradition that includes hand gestures. For Noel, watching Santiago brings back “memories of declamation and oratorical contests.”
Noel is significantly bothered by Duterte. There is a bit of mystification here when he comes up with three items that best explain the popularity of Duterte. Noel talks of the instant, the “mall” and the “digital” generation. He enumerates the many “instant” in our life, but he goes further by bringing in another institution—the mall— where the instant products are available. The digital generation is seen as peopled by those who thinks everything is “clickable” and “downloadable.”
This generation, according to Noel, wants to see crime gone in an instant, or vanished in at least six months. We could not be “patient with the long and tedious process of genuine reform and social change that we want equitable distribution of wealth and resources like a downloadable digital file.”
Well said, Noel. Well taught, perhaps?
E-mail: titovaliente@yahoo.com.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano
1 comment
More than 30 years since we were “on top of the world” and Cory could have asked WB-IMF to wipe out our debts or renegotiate better terms yes indeed the equitable distribution of wealth that is collectively created by the majority of our people and resources are still beyond their reach. When can we see a generation where no one will see the sight of slum dwellers, informal settlers and squatters? We are so exasperated and pin our hopes to someone who promises peace and order. This is a common aspiration of all classes of our society.