Of Bananas and Careless Whispers

A few monthhs back, during the acquaintance party of my two daughters at school (they both attend a Christian School, although we are Roman Catholics), an incident happened which made me chuckle. It was around that time that the Katrina-Hayden sex video scandal erupted, and the song "Careless Whisper" took on another meaning apart from its seemingly innocent lyrics about somebody vowing not to dance again after being broken hearted (For those who don't know the song, here is a link to the melody and its lyrics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpqmoBYkQfc). Well, indeed, for Katrina, the song was really a reminder not to dance again with Hayden.

But going back to the story of my daughters' acquaintance party, the DJ matter-of-factly played the song and the high school students were beginning to dance to it when suddenly the music stopped. As it turned out, one of their more prudish teachers told the DJ to stop the song, apparently out of what was perceived to be its offensive and inappropriate implications that threatened the young minds who at the time filled the schools' covered court converted into a ballroom, to think that they are in the premises of a school ran by the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP).

I like "Careless Whisper." And I am pissed off that Katrina and Hayden used it as a background to their careless dance, and for such act of carelessness, they forever tainted a song that I have loved since I first heard it.

Comes now, a similar thing happened, but this time, to my favorite fruit--the banana.

The banana is a practical, convenient and useful fruit. It is rich in potassium, and is good for people working out and on the go. It is not messy to eat, and you don't need elaborate preparation to enjoy it. You don't even have to wash your hands for you to eat it, and you can have it even when your fingers are dirty.

Yet, for a long time, the banana, together with other phallic shaped fruits and vegetables, like the eggplant, have been seriously maligned when people have associated it with what they perceive as dirty things like sex.

Recently, my favorite fruit has again taken the center-stage in a controversy when the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) moved collectively to pressure radio stations and record bars to stop playing/selling casetted discs of a song about the banana performed by the group "Blank Tape". Here is a link to the song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2ugTosqYL0&feature=related and its lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/b/blanktape/banana.html.

I am really piqued. Initially, I blamed Katrina and Hayden for polluting the message of "Careless Whisper," and for Blank Tape for demeaning, once again, the banana, which we can actually call the "fruit for all seasons."

But after examing the lyrics of the song "Banana," it occurred to me that the problem really lies not in the song, but on those who are scandalized by the seemingly plain message of a vendor selling his banana and describing its attributes. We are blaming the song and the fruit for our overly sexualized, yet overly repressed minds. This is what comes out when hypocrisy prevails over innocent fun.

It is even worse in the case of "Careless Whisper." There is nothing immoral or offensive about this song. For it to be taken as an affront to the innocence of my daughters about to dance to its melody just because it has been associated with a salacious and questionable act of two consenting adults performing a somewhat lewd dance is simply again barking at the wrong tree. It is an admission of our own weaknesses. We fault the song because we have a weak hold of our moral faculties.

The guardians of our morality, including the Bishops, teachers and parents, indeed have a responsibility to moralize and protect the young minds. But the moment we begin moving to ban songs not for the inherent messages they have based on their texts, but on the conjured danger that they bring based on their association with allegedly immoral and improper messages is tantamount to an unwarranted censorship of the art based on our own failures in our mission to provide our young, and even us adults, the proper conviction to distinguish art from trash.

I have said it before. I am going to say it again.

The best weapon against immorality is a mind capable of discerning the right from the wrong, the bad from the good when you encounter these. You cannot teach the mind to know the immoral and unethical if the only devise you can deploy is one of denying it the capability to see, feel, hear and experience and then judge. You cannot teach people how to distinguish art from pornography by denying them the right to see and judge for themselves.

When the CBCP moved to ban the song "Banana," a sense of discomfort stirred in me. I examined its lyrics, and a mature, thinking person will know that it is a fun song, and not about sex. With all due respect to the Bishops, only people with dirty minds would find the song sexually suggestive and offensive. In pushing for its banning, are they admitting that they have failed in their mission to moralize, thereby leading to a pervasiveness of dirty minds among their flock?

Of course, they can always say they are doing this for the young children. But children can be taught to distinguish good from bad, right from wrong, if only we can be honest with them and begin treating sex not as a cursed thing that should not be talked about.

And children, with all their innocence, can also teach us a thing or two about prudence.

I asked my daughters how they felt when the plug was pulled on "Careless Whisper" while they were dancing. They said they got offended--not by the song, of which they fairly discerned as independent of the Katrina-Hayden scandal, but by the rude act of interrupting their dance without any explanation at all (They only found out about the reason later).

This is the tragedy. In our desire to protect morality, we in turn commit acts that reveal our insecurity about our capacity to be moral agents, to a point that we become rude, or irrational, or both. We then commit careless acts, including reinforcing the irrational logic of associating bananas with sex, and transforming an innocent song like "Careless Whisper" into an offensive piece.

What can I say. Foucault said it before and I am going to say it again. We want to stop talk about sex by silencing and demonizing it, and banishing it from the "said," "heard" and "seen" realm--things we hope to achieve when we rudely interrupt a dance by pulling the plug on a song we think is offensive, or when we move to ban another song from being aired. But far from being successful, we only end up providing a new avenue to talk about sex, and end up sexualizing non-sexual songs like "Careless Whisper" and fruits like the banana.

The irony could never be lost on us.