Is cursing in Tagalog about the morality of someone’s mother not enough reason for self-appointed guardians of Pinoy morality to sue Juan Karlos “JK” Labajo for his song “Ere,” which features such a cuss word and which could be among the reasons it’s wildly patronized on Spotify?
Labajo even managed to convince Lukas Graham to sing that line of “Ere” at the Danish band’s well- attended concert at New Frontier Theater in Cubao, QC on Sunday night, 22 October, in which Labajo was a guest performer. The crowd wildly applauded the foreign band’s singing of what they understood to be “some swear words” in Filipino.
Labajo seems to have not been bashed by netizens for that cuss line. The one getting bashed these days is UP Maroons team captain CJ Cansino who, on that same Sunday night at the Mall of Asia Arena, stuck his tongue out at the Ateneo Blue Eagles team during halftime of their UAAP game. Some netizens denounced the gesture as “bad manners” committed in front of the 12,000 cage fans.
Sticking out one’s tongue is really just childish. Had Cansino raised a middle finger, that action could justifiably be denounced as absolute lack of good manners.
As of press time, the so-called Kapisanan ng Social Media Broadcaster ng Pilipinas Inc. has yet to react to Labajo’s song and Cansino’s literally loose tongue.
The group has filed six counts of criminal charges against actor Angeli Khang due to her alleged posting on social media of “explicit scenes” from her Vivamax movies.
The case was filed at the Pasay City Prosecutor’s Office on 10 October. Previously, the group also filed cases against TV host Vice Ganda and vlogger Toni Fowler.
After filing an obscenity case against Khang, the motley group also went after AJ Raval and fellow Vivamax stars Ayanna Misola and Azi Acosta.
The case against Vice Ganda involved the host’s eating of cake icing with real-life partner Ion Perez in the Isip Bata segment of It’s Showtime, for which the show has now been suspended by the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board.
The case against Fowler is said to be about her posts showing her dancing “obscenely” while singing.
Just last Monday, 23 October, KSMBPI, which dubs itself the “guardian of Philippine cyberspace,” filed a criminal complaint for “indecency” and “offending religious feelings” before the Pasay City Prosecutor’s Office against drag performer Pura Luka Vega (aka Amadeus Fernando Pagente) in connection with a series of videos of Pura cosplaying Jesus Christ.
The group alleged that in these uploaded videos, Pagente was “patently seen to be mimicking and mocking ‘Jesus,’,‘Jesus Christ’ or ‘Jesus of Nazareth,’ the central figure of Christianity.”
New series
Would this group likewise bother to sue the stars of Viva One’s new series Safe Skies, Archer if they were to post scenes from the series that are “steamier than [those] in ‘Rain in España?’”
Safe Skies, Archer is set to start streaming in November on Viva One, the family-friendly alternative to its mother streaming platform Vivamax. It was the new series’ director, the youthful Gino Santos, who was quoted as describing Safe Skies that way (“steamier”) during the 22 October early evening media conference at Viva Café, a stone’s throw from New Frontier Theater where Labajo got Graham to sing the cuss line from Ere.
Several attendees at the media conference (including vloggers and bloggers) asked Santos if he planned to also direct for Vivamax, following Santos’ remark that Safe Skies is “steamier” than “Rain in España,” its predecessor.
Many of the characters in Rain are also in the upcoming series, such as those portrayed by Heaven Peralejo and Marco Gallo, the top-billers in Rain.
Safe Skies has Krissha Viaje and Jerome Ponce as headliners. The series has a “univerkada” (coined from “university” and “barkada”) portrayed by Aubrey Caraan, Bea Binene, Frankie Russell, Andre Yllana Gab Lagman, Frost Sandoval, Jairus Aquino, Nicole Omillo and Hyacinth Callado.
Viaje, like Peralejo and Gallo, is a carry-over from Rain. Like Ponce, she began her career in her teens at ABS-CBN as a member of one of the then-network’s girl groups. Now managed by Viva, she is 31 while Ponce is 28.