Building Diaspora: Filipino Cultural Community Formation on the Internet

5. Laughter in the Rain: Jokes as Membership and Resistance

L A U G H T E R I N T H E R A I N 113 5 Laughter in the Rain Jokes as Membership and Resistance 113 In this forum designed to articulate “what Filipino culture really is and what it is rumored to be,” participants of soc.culture.filipino debated hundreds of questions, including the following: Are Filipino values rooted in the Philippines or can they be taught in other parts of the world? Do we want to teach our kids Filipino values? Do we even know what they are? Can Filipinos in the diaspora, especially Filipinos naturalized in the United States, be “as Filipino” as those in the Philippines? Or, did they give up their Filipinoness when they became citizens of another country? If naturalized citizens of the United States lost their Filipinoness, what are Filipino Americans who were born and raised in the United States? Are they more American than their parents? But Kanos are white, aren’t they? Does this mean that all Filipino Americans are “whitewashed”? Should all Filipino Americans or all second-generation Filipino kids refer to themselves as “born of Filipino parents” as Janet (see chapter 4) did? If so, then what do third or later generation immigrants call themselves? We’ve learned that Tagalog isn’t really an authentic language, but was created—partially by the Filipinos, but also partially by the Spaniards , a colonial power. Does that mean that the board was right in changing the alphabet to reflect colonial influences? In asserting national pride and independence, shouldn’t we try our best to abstract colonial influences? Isn’t that one way of getting rid of “colonial 114 B U I L D I N G D I A S P O R A mentality”? These questions upset many members of the newsgroup, particularly those who wished to discover or describe an authentic Filipino culture. In the following sections, I show how jokes were used to ease that pain and simultaneously create a sense of community and, thus, a Filipino group identity. Mourning and Laughter: Using Closure to Temporarily Deflect Pain Scholars have shown that humor is often used to ease pain; it is essential to the psychological well-being of people (see Rafael 1997; Mulkay 1998). Mulkay states that jokes offer an “enjoyable release from the restrictions of serious discourse, and also in the sense that it helps them to deal effectively with certain kinds of recurrent interactional difficulty” (1998, 153; see also Alampay 1995). In the past two decades, Filipinos have had to deal with intense political corruption, martial law, the assassination of a well-loved expatriate (Benigno Aquiño), and the plundering of the country’s wealth (the Marcos regime). News of abused overseas contract workers and mail-order brides were made even more apparent with the execution of Flor Contemplacion. Yet with each tragedy a proliferation of jokes erupted. On the newsgroup, jokes were used as a tool to decrease the tension that arose when various aspects of Filipino identity were debated. Participants used jokes in two ways: to close a heated debate and, more importantly, to determine membership within the Filipino community. When debates about Filipino identity became so profuse that people started questioning the very possibility of attaining a group ethnic identity as well as the unification of Filipinos, jokes were offered to show us that we Filipinos can and do share a common bond with one another. On many occasions, participants offered jokes to ease their pain from having to debate seemingly endless issues that they felt did not need to be debated in the first place. In addition, they were also used to show us that Filipinos can unify in the face of any disaster. Many participants have argued that using humor to ease the pain is itself a “Filipino trait.” One participant stated, “Jokes have always been an integral part of the Filipino culture. We are a people who have always been able to laugh at ourselves. This is one of the ways Pinoys are able to face great adversity and hardships. . . . By turning otherwise L A U G H T E R I N T H E R A I N 115 unfortunate events into something light and funny, we are able to deal with life’s hardships easier.” Another participant illustrates the importance of redefining unfortunate events. He recalls that after the assassination of Senator Benigno...