It’s been over a week now but the warning issued by Cebu City Hall Administrator Lucelle Mercado to organizers of the Vice Ganda concert not to stage a similar show still reflects the deep conservatism of city officials.
Concert promoters TSE Live Inc. probably didn’t expect her to to be so upset again after ordering the takedown of billboards showing Vice Ganda in a plunging red gown surrounded by a dozen bare-chested men lying around him.
The actual concert didn’t have the platoon of macho escorts, just two male dancers. Vice Ganda sang, danced, “twerked” like Miley Cyrus and dished out his trademark off-color jokes. He doesn’t have cleavage worth worrying about either.
The gay comedian’s persona is well known by the public who watch his antics in an afternoon TV variety show. Just who was surprised?
The concert was promoted as “R3” entertainment or for adults only. There was no mistaking the content would be risque.
What probably frustrates the organizers is not the self-proclaimed judgment that the billboard images were obscene, but that City Hall officials reversed their position on short notice, just two weeks before the actual performance.
The billboards were up weeks earlier.
After granting an amusement tax discount, the City Council suddenly backtracked, when Mercado suddenly announced that the images looked too “sexy” and the billboards had to go.
In asserting community standards of morality, the voice of one official acting alone, with verbal instructions to omit this or that display, borders dangerously on censorship.
Organizers should have been reminded about what happened when some Manila starlets took part in a Black Saturday bikini show held at Bantayan Island back in 2009.
One of them, Viva Hot Babe Jennifer Lee, had to personally apologize to then Cebu governor Gwendolyn Garcia who cited her, her fellow starlets and the show’s organizers and hosts for violating a provision of Cebu’s Women Development Code and Revised Penal Code against the staging of shows deemed indecent.
The powers of the Cebu City Anti-Indecency Board (CCAIB) are not absolute.
But Mercado wearing two hats, as CAIB chairperson and City Administrator, has shown she has real clout in deciding what is offensive and illegal in her eyes.
In the previous confiscation of some “hot” tabloids in the city, the CAIB struck even in the absence of a court order. That’s a lot of power right there that should be exercised within the clear bounds of the city ordinance creating the body.
There was no outcry from the public against the take down of the billboards, but City Hall’s decision to collect amusement taxes after granting an exemption was a belated knee-jerk reaction.
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