Dialect This, MoFo!: Shopping mall security guards who lazily inspect your bag

Thursday, 01 April 2010 12:00 AM Adam David

based on a suggestion from Angelo Suarez

Sadly, sometimes sikyus search somewhat sleepily, sloppily snubbing supposedly standard security systems, snuffing shoppers’ sense-o’-security. It inspires indecent incidences, kung-anu-anong kalokohan, yeah yeah, you understand when I say I could care less about lazy shopping mall security guards, seeing them really as one of the many many efforts to assuage the various social fears of the shopping elite, chieftest among them the fear from being awash by feelings of shame from spending money when others cannot, the secondary fear being cultural contamination from the native barbarians?

The guards are not there to keep the peace from teetering to chaos. What peace? They are not there to protect us from terrorists. What terrorists? They are not there to protect us from thieves. What thieves? The shopping mall crowd is a self-navigating self-maintaining self-securing organism: it makes a line when it needs a line; it makes a hole when it needs a hole – we do not affect the shopping mall; the shopping mall affects us: the real thievery, the real terrorism and chaos are happening inside the building – if the security guards really want to protect us from all the bad things that might happen, they should in all earnestness prevent us from ever setting foot beyond the hermetic doorways they lazily guard. At most, they are there to give us directions to the nearest ATM. At most, they are there to keep the beggars at the gates. At most, they are there to make us believe we’re secure. They are the jeepney seatbelts we only wear when there are cops about; they are the UV filters we put on our monitors; they are the ombudsman, the baranggay tanod, the pseudonym in your online forum-trolling account: the many fictions we tell ourselves to help us sleep well at night.

Why worry about shopping mall security guards being lazy with the shopping mall securing? We could do with more colour and dirt, with less burning of our meagre money, with more fear and guilt and shame in our heart of hearts as we skip along merrily in the gleaming manicured airconditioned chambers and halls of our many churches of capitalism.

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putosekyu 02 April 10, 04:47 PM

but come on, adam, do you really think they'd want to do the things they're doing everytime you enter a mall and they faux-frisk you? and isn't it the same thing anywhere else where there's a goddamn white-and-blue guard, mapa-lalake man o babae, doing the same exact thing whenever you go inside the MRT, a bank, any high- or low-rise in ayala or avenida, whenever you pay your bill in meralco or a bayad center, your fave pawnshop, the nearest hospital, etc.?

juncruznaligas 03 April 10, 01:16 PM

thanks for giving it your time of day, puto, and even for commenting.

and that's true, but we all do a lot of things we don't want to do, so i wouldn't care to criticise their job along those lines (especially seeing that it's actually their job to not just faux-frisk me, it's an easy critique to make, and thus one i don't want to do). and like i said early in the essay, i could care less about shopping mall security guards. if i had a free hand in choosing the subject, i wouldn't pick shopping mall security guards, but the rules of the MOFO concept was someone else would pick the subject for me, and gelo picked this for me the same way i picked fezboobs oversharing for carl.

so, i concentrated on shopping mall security guards because 1) it was the subject given to me, and because 2) i have a running series of essays on cubao, so this essay was a sort of natural fit for that, a marginal note, in a way, directed upon farmer's plaza specifically, which i am yet to write about, but the occasion asked for this, and thus i did this, lest i waste precious words.

and yeah, it's true that this is mainly status quo everywhere, but this is how i see it in the mall context. i imagine that in banks and pawnshops and hospitals, it'd be more or less the same, ie, to keep the riff-raff out and the money in (i wouldn't characterise bank guards as lazy, though), but they'd have very different dynamics when you get to think about it some more. what do you think? how would you wax intellectual on it without just dismissing it as mere laziness?

putosekyu 04 April 10, 02:13 AM

i thought the whole mofo concept digs the necessity of furthering the dialogue and going deeper into the issue, and not dismissing the subject in lieu of what is obviously obvious, hence my extra questions which actually point to, need i say, a more critical observation of "laziness" of security guards, mall-stationed or otherwise. and if we're gonna talk here of farmer's plaza, it being the location of the subject and the meeting point of callboys, conmen, and thieves, i'd hardly say there's even a single elite soul shopping there. even the contemporary middle class is unaware of plaza fair.

juncruznaligas 04 April 10, 09:07 AM

"and if we're gonna talk here of farmer's plaza, it being the location of the subject and the meeting point of callboys, conmen, and thieves, i'd hardly say there's even a single elite soul shopping there. even the contemporary middle class is unaware of plaza fair."

ah, yes, one would think that nga, up until proven otherwise more often than comfort would allow, which is what happened to me and my mom a few years back.

about the laziness, i just don't see it as pregnant of commentary or observation as you do outside of dismissing it as laziness and seeing it as a national phenomenon (like you said, virtually all guards are like that, regardless of station), so i navigated it towards a topic that i believe is of more import. i'd rather not restate juan tamad analogies that will end wishy-washy disparaging them as "typical" pinoys and yet sympathising with them by putting myself in their shoes etc etc, and concentrate rather on testing a thesis that i've yet to hear stated here or anywhere else, a thesis i myself have yet to think about in a more thorough and productive way. for me, the laziness of the mall guards is of no consequence. what is is what the mall guards themselves symbolise, filtered through a running commentary on consumerism, globalisation, and the gentrification of cubao.

these are, after all, "essays," meaning more "try" than the implied "kasanayan" in "sanaysay." i'm trying to rediscover the essay's capacity to actually capture/portray a mind at work, and i know everyone's mileage may vary here, but my mind barely settles on foregone conclusions or easy answers, preferring to contemplate on things it is unsure about, trying them out, and see if they work.

sayang nga siguro na i refuse to explore the laziness aspect, or the more universal all-guards-are-lazy vein. it'll take a writer better than me to be able to think out loud outside of the usual things that come to mind, or at the very least a writer less distracted by an overarching theme that he's presently exploring for a future book (coming out december 2010!!!).

before i forget, about the shopping elite: i was thinking more people-with-buying-power-in-this-poor-economically-decimated-and-dessicated-country-are-automatically-elite than people-who-hang-out-in-podium-and-eastwood. for every person buying stuff in the mall - yes, kahit farmer's plaza pa yan, and i know you know this - are dozens who don't get to do that, and the gulf is spreading ever wider, and unfortunately, that's true for me/us here in cubao. read my cubao essays pala if you have the time and patience for them! plugging, haha. at salamat sa komento!

T 06 April 10, 05:02 PM

>> i'm trying to rediscover the essay's capacity to actually capture/portray a mind at work, and i know everyone's mileage may vary here, but my mind barely settles on foregone conclusions or easy answers, preferring to contemplate on things it is unsure about, trying them out, and see if they work.

I hope you do rediscover the essay's capacity, not only through having a new. I have this feeling, mostly from reading American poetry from the 60's-70's (hello language at black mountain poets, love you very much!), that everything is actually, an essay. Todo reduction na iyon, but reading the essays produced by the beautiful people of that period, I couldn't help but think that way.

That said, this isn't that wonderful creation from the 60s. Nowhere near. I mean, hello naman sa "the real terror is inside the building." Another ironic/hyperbolic/paradoxical way out. Dekada 40 pa yata e gasgas na gasgas na yang kind of thinking! Ewan ko ba kung bakit umenter na naman at nagpapakastar!

Saka if you really want to rediscover the essay's capacity to whatevs, I'm sure you must agree that the style must also be rediscovered. Para kasing I've seen this in several blogs at magazines na e.

I hope dumating sa point na not only different and new yung ginagawa ninyo, kundi relevant talaga. Pero right now I'll settle for different and new. Mamaya sabihin ninyo I'm asking too much as a reader, pero why shouldn't I? Nagsasayang ako ng oras basahin mga gawa ninyo no!

juncruznaligas 09 April 10, 06:51 AM

"Ewan ko ba kung bakit umenter na naman at nagpapakastar!"

baka kasi di pa siya laos na notion, o rather, accurate pa rin siya hanggang ngayon? natuwa nga ako na binring-up mo yung Dekada 40 na timeframe, dahil yung unang mall na (sa pagkakaalam ko) ginawan ng ganitong reading ay isang mall sa tokyo na sinadyang magpagawa ng istasyon ng tren sa mismong entrance lobby nila, circa 1930s. at nagugulat nga ako na di mo pa binibring-up si roland tolentino, na isa sa mga nauna (o at least ay medyo kontemporaryo) na manunulat na tumalakay na rin ng mall bilang espasyo ng whatevs!

ang isang isyu ko rin kasi na di pa talaga nareresolba ay yung pagbabalanse sa pagpapahayag ng mga ideya na "kilala" sa intellectual circles natin dito na malamang ay hindi "kilala" o "kapansin-pansin" para sa mga tipikal lang na tao, ie, nanay ko, na hindi "bobo" by any account - anak ng diplomat na nagFA sa marylhurst - pero hindi malay sa politics ng consumerism. yung tanong ay: gusto mo bang maging entry level cultural studies whatevs? o starter pack cultural studies whatevs? o advanced readings cultural studies whatevs? alam nating me kanya-kanyang isyu yan at kanya-kanyang bentahin rin.

pero tulad ng sinabi ko, clearing house muna ng pag-iisip ang concern ko. mahalaga na iunclutter muna ang lahat-lahat, tingnan kung ano ang accurate/relevant pa rin, hasain yung mga mapurol na, etc etc, bago makagawa ng bago. ang problema kasi dun sa biglaang pagpapahayag ng "bagong" notion ay hahanapan ka naman ng pinanggalingan mo. ang paraan ko, ito muna, setup. kung mabait ang diyoses (at ang mga boss ko sa POC), magrewrestling tayo ng mga bagong paraan ng pag-iisip tungkol sa mga bagay na'to!

"I hope dumating sa point na not only different and new yung ginagawa ninyo, kundi relevant talaga."

at pare-pareho tayo ng iniisip dito! hindi yan "asking too much," lalo na na tungkulin yan mismo ng manunulat at ng tekstong binubuo niya. at hindi yan pagsasayang ng oras, ha!

at salamat ulit, t!

juncruznaligas 09 April 10, 06:53 AM

"that everything is actually, an essay."

nakalimutan kong sabihin na naniniwala pala ako dito, o na ang lahat ng sinasabi/sinusulat natin ay proposal/proposition na mas nakaanggulo sa dynamics ng essay.

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Dialect This, MoFo!: Shopping mall security guards who lazily inspect your bag

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