Flagellation also surfaced as part of a national advertising campaign during the non-participatory revival. In 1977, Mod magazine published a religious advertisement (placed strategically beneath an article advocating life after death) offering a free tract titled "You have hope!" At the top of the advertisement was a drawing of a flagellant whipping himself alongside a man carrying a cross. "I'm doing this so that God will forgive my sins," confessed the illusory flagellant via a cartoon bubble. Underneath was the rhetorical question: "Do you need to bear the cross or punish yourself for the forgiveness of your sins?"
Turning to literature and the arts in the same time-period (the 1960s onwards), the participatory revival of flagellation inspired at least seven short stories (which I shall not discuss here), most famously "The Outside Heart" by Linda Ty-Casper; as well as a medley of cartoons, notably by Larry Alcala. A sample of cartoons, taken from Weekly Graphic ("Mang Ambo"), Weekend ("A slice of life"), Weekly Nation ("This business of living"; "Mang Ambo") and Mod ("Mod-caps") between 1965 and 1987, reveals the imaginative range of Alcala's art, as well as his Pinoy (Filipino) consciousness. Alcala conjures up flagellants with a cat-o-nine-tails made of rubber: "practically harmless, but it gives a loud whipping sound and spurts imitation blood"; a flagellant in pursuit of an anaesthetist; a flagellant followed by an ambulance and a nurse; a flagellant who feels no pain until he steps on a drawing pin, or has a tetanus injection, or is flogged by his wife; a flagellant armed only with a backscratcher; a man who resorts to flagellation to cure prickly heat; flagellant hippies; a flagellant distracted by a beautiful woman; two flagellants posing for tourists; even an unpopular flagellant being flogged by the inhabitants of an entire village.
Aside from cartoons, flagellation also inspired a wide range of poetry. In 1975, in a sympathetic article comprised solely of photographs and verse, Expressweek asked: if Christ himself was scourged and shamed, how can we be spared? Flagellants shuffle timidly into the light of dawn, hooded in humiliation, their loss and sorrow conjoined with the grief of God. In 1977, Focus Philippines published a poem by Sammy Cudal Sta. Maria about flagellants in San Fernando, Pampanga (the town where I do fieldwork). The poet is critical of the penitencia, and sceptical about flagellation as a form of atonement (which, I repeat, it is not). The opening stanza begins:
These are the sins
That are supposed to bleed
And bleach in the brine of remorse,
The failings that should have
Been left shattered
By the trampling of feet
Over penitent miles.
These are the sins
That swoon from contrite souls
Sins are knotted cords
Taut around these men's nakedness,
Precise and measured tangles
That remain unbroken
By the puny blows of a tradition.
Flagellation has featured in several paintings, most famously in the work of Galo Ocampo, an artist of international repute who designed the coat of arms for the Philippine republic. In the 1950s, Ocampo produced a series of paintings on flagellation which included "Superstition" (1953) and "Shades of Things to Come" (1956). I saw "Superstition" in the Metropolitan Museum in Manila in May 1988. Underneath the painting was the following caption: "Flagellants walk around whipping themselves till their bodies are badly bruised They believe this act of extreme physical suffering will cleanse them of their sins." On 26 March 1961, This Week published drawings by two artists, Rod Dayao and J. Blanco, portraying the events of Semana Santa (Holy Week). Underneath a picture of a cross-bearing flagellant was the caption: "A penitent carrying a wooden cross stumbles along on the dusty street, as children holding thorny whips lash him as part of the punishment he has vowed to undergo. Motive is religious: the expiation of his sins." At times, behind this ubiquitous supposition of sin in these diverse representations of flagellation, is an enduring sense that for the educated elite in the Philippines flagellation is perceived as honourable but misguided, a practical if primitive solution to the inevitability of transgression, a noble relic of a simple but virtuous way of life long since left behind. Many upper-class Filipinos, familiar with the tenets of "orthodox" Catholicism, will echo earnestly the words of a Manila journalist (paraphrasing the bible), who remarked one Good Friday at dawn as we watched a group of bleeding flagellants lie prostrate in San Fernando cathedral precinct: "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
In 1961, flagellation was dramatised on stage in "Dance of the Cross" by Leonor Orosa. A photograph of the performance later adorned the front cover of Variety magazine (15 April 1962). In its review article, Philippines Free Press described in poetic detail the "terrifying loveliness" of the choreography: "the beat of whips, the writhing of a flagelante scourging himself. Like a dancing dervish, he prances about, a rapture of pain. Like a sacrificial offering, he crouches down before the Cross and bends backwards, his arms forming a cross upon his breast as he flails himself on the back." Ten years later, "Ang Antipos (The Flagellant)" was hailed as "one of the most celebrated numbers in the repertoire of the Filipinescas Dance Company", and billed as the "highlight" of the 1971 Pagdiriwang festival at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Successfully packaged as high art for consumption by Manila's literati, flagellation was endorsed as a viable cultural expression of national identity. In the film-world, flagellation featured in Mike de Leon's award-winning horror film, Itim (1976), while in 1977, Kidlat Tahimik produced The Perfumed Nightmare (discussed by Jameson 1992: 186-213), which also includes scenes of religious self-flagellation. In 1978, an article on flagellation was published in Filipino Heritage, a ten volume encyclopaedia subtitled "The Making of a Nation".
Although interest in flagellation peaked in the 1970s, self-flagellation still finds representation in art, literature and performance, not just in the Philippine archipelago but throughout the nascent diaspora. In the United States, Chris Millado's widely acclaimed play "PeregriNasyon," performed in Hawaii in December 1996, opened with a flagellation scene, while Filipino-American film-makers, such as Marlon Fuentes (Bontoc Eulogy, 1995) and Angela Shaw (Nailed, 1992) have woven images of flagellation and crucifixion respectively into post-modern, (quasi)autobiographical narratives which explore contemporary issues of personal and cultural identity in a transnational world of displacement.
Earlier, I referred to the ambivalent or polarized nature of the non-participatory revival of interest in self-flagellation. Although flagellation was upheld during the 1960s and 1970s as intrinsically Filipino, interest in the custom was countered by virulent criticism from indigenous antagonists, who argued that for a newly independent republic self-flagellation was an intolerable atavism. The fact that such potent hostility was overcome is testimony to the force and dynamism of the revival of flagellation. Examples are prolific and a brief sample will suffice. As early as 1949, Philippine Trends described self-flagellation as a "hangover from the Middle Ages" performed by "fanatical penitents" who engage in "a frenzy of self-scourging". In 1962, a columnist in The Manila Times denounced flagellation as "a throwback to the savage". Five years later, an article in The Saturday Chronicle described flagellation as "downright fanaticism - revolting to the spirit, senseless, and gruesome." Recently, flagellation has been branded as "primitive and barbaric" (Sunday Globe Magazine, 1990), a "macabre masochism" (Daily Globe, 1991).
In the 1960s and 1970s, concern was repeatedly voiced in the Philippine press that flagellation was an embarrassing anachronism (echoing the view of eighteenth century Spanish missionaries), and "a blackeye to the Filipino image abroad". Cartoons in The Manila Times featured bleeding flagellants surrounded by incredulous tourists. "Is this right?" asked one caption (1961). "Only once a year, fortunately!" exclaimed another (1965). "Still at it", remarked a third, as two flagellants labelled "Superstition" and "Ignorance" marched defiantly into a brave new world (1968). The Times also castigated flagellation in a number of bellicose Holy Week editorials: "Deplorable spectacle blood-curdling The local authorities must intervene if sanity and reason are to be restored" (1966); and the following year, "this barbaric ritual should be discouraged". Even Imelda Marcos (then First Lady) was reported to be alarmed at the adverse effects of self-flagellation on the Filipino image abroad. Yet despite this potent, vociferous, and on occasion vitriolic opposition, self-flagellation continued to increase in popularity.
Evidently, the role of the Philippine press (and later television) in the revival of religious self-flagellation is significant, especially from the 1960s onwards. The press did not cause or trigger the participatory revival; journalists and editors responded to unfolding events. Nevertheless, the result was sensational front-page headlines, news reports and photographs, as well as a myriad of features and columns in both national broadsheets and tabloids. The attention of the media, the oxygen of publicity, reached not only a national, but increasingly an international audience, which itself had a direct and tangible impact on ritual performance. Annually in the last three decades, tens of thousands of people, foreigners and Filipinos alike, have flocked to witness the drama and spectacle of ritual self-flagellation in key locations in Pampanga and Bulacan. The combined interest of a captive audience and an ubiquitous mass media has not only attracted new recruits, but nurtured a more publicity-conscious, media-savvy generation of flagellants. The social dynamic on Good Friday between the flagellants and the media is too complex to discuss here. The point is, wittingly or unwittingly, the Manila media has helped sustain the revival of flagellation in an ongoing dialectical process. The revival did not burn out or stagnate because it was able to evolve and maintain impetus. Since its genesis, several key developments have taken place: the advent of indigenous crucifixion in 1961 and foreign crucifixion in 1994; the official promotion and sponsorship of religious self-mortification by the Department of Tourism in the Philippines; the endorsement of the events of Good Friday by multinational soft drink corporations; the inception of paid crucifixion; the spiritual impact of the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo volcano; and the recent representation of religious self-mortification by foreign media as a symbol of the plight of the rural poor.
Earlier, I listed a breakdown by decade of articles on flagellation published in Philippine periodicals in the twentieth century. In the 1970s, 43 articles appeared in print, as opposed to 23 in the 1980s. This decrease appears to signal a decline of interest in flagellation, and indeed in 1979, an editorial in Who magazine declared: "We've had enough of flagellants, so we thought of giving you, dear reader, a more exciting number for our Holy Week extravaganza." In fact, media interest did not diminish per se, but merely switched from one form of self-mortification - flagellation - to another, crucifixion by nailing.