THIS piece started really on the wrong foot. Later, you would understand why I chose that particular idiom to open this piece. Enervated I truly was after watching Boy Abunda’s birthday special. This was that show (or shows) where Boy Abunda sat alone on a metaphorical high chair, surrounded by individuals who were at one time guests in his show Bottomline. This time, the roles had been reversed: the interviewer became the interviewee and the interviewee, the interviewers. The idea is charming; the resulting product not amusing. I asked myself what the problem was.
The content and how the whole procedure went were darkly and, not amusingly, narcissistic. At many points, Boy came across as smug. At many points, he looked smart-alecky. At a certain point, the host did not come across as fair game. To be the hunted in a forest of interested interrogators would have really made the show edgy and fun, if not irredeemably camp in that glorious way, and, anyway, he could always pull this situation off. Remember, this guy—this Boy—is a force of nature, a rainbow connection to any glib and glam DNA in our human nature.
My discomfort really was in how the whole presentation was thought of, and prepared. I imagine Boy Abunda’s group seated around the table and finally deciding on this format: we will invite all the people you have interviewed. Of course, they will all come...we tell them what to ask...or ask them to choose from many possible options...and you will be seated...alone...but not helpless, of course...of course, you will never be convincing as helpless and naïve...then all the questions will come about your politics...your childhood...boyhood...insecurities...your sexuality...anything at all.
On paper, the plot must’ve seemed helplessly engaging. Produced and performed, the interview was terribly one-sided and, surprise, the unilateral flow was not so much from those asking the many-splendored questions but from the respondent himself, confident, very himself, very Boy Abunda. Very powerful.
I tried to make sense of the disjointed atmosphere. Was it about the question? Partly. Was it about the interrogators? Yes, a lot of the cognitive lapse was coming from those asking question. Most of them appeared to be proceeding from a rehearsed space, throwing questions, asking questions gingerly even if the questions were more of the strongest spicy kind. As soon as the question flew, the respondent grabbed them and spliced and sliced the air with such intellectual menace.
Going back to the question, those questions were good. They were probing, intimate questions. They were questions that should have been asked perhaps by some faceless, articulate prober. Not from an arena of individuals paying homage to a raconteur. It will never work. It never did.
I was looking for that thing that was missing. I knew what it was: vulnerability. Here is a very powerful person, not in the manner by which he handles talents but by how he communicates his handling of those talents. Bar none, Boy Abunda is the most articulate, most intelligent of talent agents.
I couldn’t sleep that night. I knew Boy Abunda would always have the intellect to understand this critique. My sleeplessness was in my toying with the title for this article. That word was “Hubris.”
The next morning, I was ready to print that on the white blank space: “Hubris.” But that evening, and the next evenings, something happened. I got to watch the late newscast over at ABS-CBN, starring (yes, I truly mean this word) Ces Drilon, Karen Davila and Julius Babao. This is an elegant network team, with the said personalities using their natural voice without resorting to some unseen spirit megaphone in their breast. Boy Abunda joined them a month ago. I must confess that I did not expect anything radical from his presence, especially given that Boy had been tasked to discuss segments involving lifestyle, culture, show business, readily the soft aspect of newcast.
That night and the next were special: my nieces and nephews were home for a break. We were all watching and not even aware that our attention was focused on Boy Abunda, discussing something not about show or the business of shows, but about population. He was ticking off statistics so smoothly he looked like a reactor to some unseen academic paper. Dana, the psychologist in the family, eating chocolates while mumbling about possible tonsillitis the next morning, blurted something like, “He [Boy] is so prepared. He is the most intelligent of them all.” The reference being that Boy Abunda, as in cinema, had more scenes to chew and he was chewing them rightly and strongly. The other newscasters were not given those scenes to chew.
Dana continued: “Well, he looks intelligent because he prepares for it.” Ara, the other nephew joined in: “But he makes sense.”
Boy Abunda does make sense. He makes sense because he comes prepared. Why take that against this Boy? Was he reading from a prompter? If he was, then he is a good reader. If he was not, then he does have power.
What I had been anxious about is not happening: Boy Abunda is not a flippant, fancy addition to the newscast family. He, as it turns out, is an integral one. It does seem to occur in fact that the evening newscast does not really need a chika portion about show business. There will be lots of spaces for them. There is a need, however, for a person to see population problems in the context of culture, and make the discussion sensible. It does matter that this Boy was dressed appropriately that night in sedate brown.
Would I still go for “Hubris.” Naah. Not anymore. Power is more like it.
Next time, why not put Boy Abunda at that semi-circle and not at the edge of the newscast table? As a public anthropologist, I would be the first to rejoice at the recognition of cultures as not merely lifestyle in the sense of new designs and new arts or of theater and dance and film, but as elements as crucial as politics and corruption and governance and the government. This Boy should be more than up to discussing these news. Without hubris.
