Untie/Anti-the Yellow Ribbon: Ang Duguang Yellow Ribbon at ang Dihital na Manipulasyon Bilang Parodya

Abstract

From its foreign and colonial origins to the familial and political usage of the Aquinos, the yellow ribbon as cultural insignia has been articulated and rearticulated in particular socio-political landscapes. In the Philippines, the meaning attached to the yellow ribbon is constantly changing: Love for democracy, clamor for change, and recently, struggle for justice. Such strong attributions explain how the yellow ribbon became a symbol of nationalism of the liberal-bourgeois kind on one hand, and the national democratic on the other. Still, its origins in the country can be rooted from its dramatic association with modern-day heroes Ninoy and Cory. Thus, when their only son, Noynoy, was urged by his political clique to run for President, it was convenient for them to re-use the yellow ribbon as symbolic capital to bolster his political party’s campaign. Indeed, the yellow ribbon helped catapult Noynoy to the highest position of the country. But barely a year after his victory, Noynoy’s yellow ribbon went through transmogrifications that targeted the very state from which it originated. Individuals, organizations, and allies of the Philippine Left produced digitally manipulated images that not only parody the administration but also delegitimize Noynoy. Perhaps the most intriguing of which is the bloodstained yellow ribbon that vividly reminds the nation of the massacres at Hacienda Luisita and at Mendiola; both associated with the Cojuangco-Aquino family. Certainly, parody through digital manipulation offers polemic challenge to the state’s notion of politics of change. More so, parodied yellow ribbons visualize and narrativize an epistemological shift from state-sponsored and ruling class politics to the discourse of protest and cultural revolution.