The Philippine Online Chronicles

It costs a lot of money to be cultured. Unless you’re lucky.

Books are expensive. Going to the movies is expensive. Theater is expensive. CDs, even despite the considerable price drop for some of them, are expensive. Heck, even good TV comes at a cost.

Of course I can imagine all of those smirks and knowing, raised eyebrows, from those who are thinking, “No dude, it’s not expensive at all.” And then they will tell me where I can get all these things through means that aren’t exactly legal, that I’m not really allowed to mention because our fine publication adheres to copyright laws and seeks to respect the rights of creators, and, just so that you know, rhyme with schmorrents.

And again, there are the lucky ones, the people with parents who loved reading and so they grew up around books, or had an uncle who went to film school and had an extensive VHS library, or who had an older sibling that was into theater and got them interested in the performing arts, or other such lucky occurrences.

In a country where (public) schools and libraries are generally ill-equipped to provide the young with a good education in math, science, languages (English and Filipino), and other subjects, it’s hard to expect these institutions to provide a strong cultural education. And often, culture is overlooked because of all the other things that these institutions have to address. So it’s either the home that shows appreciation for these things (often such households belonging to the middle-class and upwards), or the individual who desires to educate herself in the arts.

From whence this desire comes is always an interesting story. What drives one’s search for great books, films, artwork? Was it a definitive moment in school? A great teacher who exposed them to a worldview-changing work? A random movie that turns into a life-changing experience? Whatever it is, the rather esoteric-sounding idea of this life in search of beauty is not such a unique thing.

It isn’t something confined to artists, nor people in the arts community, but I believe that it’s a human impulse, when exposed to great beauty, to continue to search for beauty, to want things in your life to be beautiful. I know that last sentence sounds so artsy-fartsy hoity-toity, but it’s a statement that, to my mind at least, is potentially paradigm-changing. If we believed that steady and regular exposure to artistic beauty would drive people to demand more beauty, a more aesthetics-driven world around them, then we might be living in a very different world.

Take a moment and imagine a world not defined merely by the practical, the quickest, cheapest way of doing things, or as in the sad state of our country, the way in which many public works can be accomplished while some government official gets to pocket a wad of cash. See a Metro defined by a populous that demands aesthetic as well as functional qualities of the things around them. It’s a difficult thing to picture. We define our identities and our personalities by our personal effects, our fashion, and other things which we can closely control. But at a certain point and a certain level of consciousness I believe that we should start demanding that our surroundings also seek to define us, to speak to and of us on an artistic level. This sounds like a pipe dream, like something that will probably never happen. Still, I think it’s important for this to be a goal, no matter how long-term, out of reach, or simply wacky, that it may sound to most.

But we return to this problem of the pursuit of beauty being an expensive journey. And it’s not just people undergoing plastic surgery and all other kinds of treatment that will tell you that beauty is expensive (the prices of those are similarly plunging though, I hear). An original DVD, when it’s newly released runs upwards of P700. CDs are still in the neighborhood of P400. And books, the good stuff that the literati salivate over, usually won’t go for less than P500.

This is where Saved from the Bargain Bin comes in. Here the writers of Metakritiko, who are bargain bin hounds, whether these bins contain books, CDs, DVDs, ukay-ukay clothing, or whatever, will give readers the heads up on good deals. We’ll talk about our favorite finds, authors that we were lucky enough to find at the Booksale that you might like too, great DVDs on the cheap, and all other manner of stuff that we dug up. We will try to review these things based on their quality, as well as bang for your buck.

Building up your cultural education can be expensive. But sometimes you find a bargain bin and you can get lucky. Through this series we hope to increase your luck.

Photo from my own bargain bin.