The chief justice

From where he sits, the late former congressman Ysmael Bukad could not help feeling the whole absurdity of his condition. Here he is, watching the impeachment trials from a theater screen up in Heaven. But he is not watching the trial itself. He is watching through the eyes of Ang Tigbuhat, the writer of this text, and Tigbuhat is watching the trials transpire over the news.

Plato  noted the absurdity of art for its being an illusionistic copy of an illusion. Plato after all thought that everything we perceive, what to us is reality, is only illusion. Reality is always hidden. Which is all very well, except that since Bukad was watching the “reality” inside a television screen through somebody else’s eyes now projecting through a theater screen up in Heaven, he knew he was watching reality through many layers of illusion. He warned himself immediately to be careful with what he believed about the whole thing. He warned himself, not to be too caught up with the surface details of what he saw. He warned himself: Search always for the fundamentals, the core reality that lies hidden under the armor of the technical, and in this particular case, the technological.

For he had read somewhere that media, especially televised media, is never impartial. After all, what people actually believe in about anything inside the picture screen is always influenced not only by reason, or if you will the rational, but also by things invisible to most people unless they are specialists in the field of recording reality through a camera. What we feel about everything we see is always influenced by the forms that define them. Take a woman. Dress her in black. Take the same woman. Now dress her in red. Take the picture this way. The change could mean the difference between whether we love, hate or fear that same woman. But most of us would think, it is the woman herself and not the forms she wears around her.

What artists could tell you if you ever asked, is that form encompasses the most abstract levels of feeling and thinking. Think in terms of line, value, color, space, texture, etc. These are called the elements of design. They would seem only surface elements. But a specialist could use them to entrance viewers into feeling anything at all the artist wills. Take for instance the old pictures of Adolph Hitler. Have you ever wondered why in most of his pictures the camera is always lower than his chin, so that we always look up at him? You guessed it. Taken from that vantage point the picture always makes him look larger than life, powerful. He looks exactly like the great dictator his chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels wanted him to be.

If you asked Bukad what was for him the true marker of Marcos’ downfall, it would be for him those newspaper pictures showing the dictator all bloated up and sick, his eyes puffed so that it would seem as if he could not see the world very well through them. After those pictures became public, his time was up. The pictures tell everything. Even Imelda’s tears could not stay the deluge. Indeed they actually helped.

The pictures tell us whether the public figure is vulnerable or still powerful. The camera does not express simply a human body. It expresses a psychology. It might even seem to record the spirit inside the man. But this spirit is what Plato might have called only the illusion of the spirit inside the man. For this “spirit” is not constructed of the same spirit God breathed into the man. It is simply constructed of the most “cosmetic” elements. The makeup that covers the true face. The way the man stands as he approaches the witness stand. His manner of dress. The colors about him. And the way he looks and speaks at his accusers and the television camera. All these things can be learned though not easily; Or if not that, they can be hired by way of a good communications consultant.

Which is why Bukad was looking at the world through the theater of Tigbuhat’s mind even as he constantly prayed the artist/writer would follow closely the impeachment trials. He is now almost sure the impeached Chief Justice would take the witness stand. But only if his case was salvageable. He knew it is either that or resign. If the former, it would be a critically good show, way much better than the fodder the country’s film industry regularly cranks out.

In his mind, appearing as witness is the impeached Chief Justice’s last chance at reacquiring a modicum of control over his fate. And he could still win his case by simple appearance. But of course, he would need a good script. His dollar deposits do not have to be perfectly explained. But there should at least be a fair level of believability in his explanations. Art, illusion and the magic of media are powerful things. They can suspend disbelief in the viewer. But the testimony itself would be just as important. The actor is probably there. But will the script suffice?