EXPOSING ANA: DIGITAL DIARIES

INFLUENCERS ARE ASWANGS

LOOKING AT THE BIGGER PICTURE

*From my last post

As mentioned*, the initial narrative was imagining aswangs living in the city and blending in with everyday people. The images were intentionally dark with consistent colored lighting to highlight their nature of being afraid of light. I had some extras be a part of my series as civilians in the background, subtly acting cautious that they’re in the presence of an aswang. I wanted to capitalize on what it would be like if I situated them doing what city people would do, showing how they were losing their essence in this generation. 

When I presented my initial photos*, during my first presentation, the main comment was that the idea was there, but it was obvious I had only scratched the surface. My photos may have been visually consistent in terms of technicalities, but the idea of utilizing the aswang still felt shallow. I was given a chance to create one more image and to choose one specific type of aswang to better define the direction I was going for, to move forward to the next chapter of capstone creation. 

According to Maximo D. Ramos’ classifications of the aswang, there are several of them that were categorized to be identifiable with European creatures— that being vampires, witches, ghouls, and viscera suckers. The creature closest to what I’d shown was the viscera sucker— known to shapeshift as a beautiful woman with long-hair and light complexion in the day time, and at night she detaches from her lower half to fly.  In the Philippines, she is infamously known as the manananggal.  

Weeks later, my capstone advisor Sir Clems, shows me two books— the first one was titled Mythica Obscura— a zine series, revealing mythical Philippine creatures with accompanying illustrations from different Filipino artists. And the second, titled The Aswang Inquiry, is much like a short encyclopedia about aswangs targeted for kids with accompanying illustrations by Gilda Cordero-Fernando. 

He told me he met Karl Gaverza, the writer of Mythica Obscura, with help from Miss Dar (one of my former professors and who provided The Aswang Inquiry as one of the references to me). He encouraged me to approach Sir Karl so I could get better insights and perspective on aswangs and Philippine folklore in general. 

Albeit, I didn’t prepare that many questions before meeting Sir Karl (which I kind of regret, realizing that research is my weak point). Ultimately, I wanted to keep an open mind on what I could gather based on his expertise on the subject. 

He told me interesting stories about his travels to different regions in the Philippines for research, people’s real-life encounters with aswangs, some works about them, and his thoughts on how they’re represented in media today. 

What stood out when we were discussing and what I wish I had realized earlier— was that there is a very definite line between how Western culture and Philippine culture view their respective creatures: The former sees their monsters as fictional— mainly villains, and for fair reason why they often use them for entertainment pieces; The latter treat their creatures like spiritual guardians, not entirely villains because of our roots from animism and of the punishments they could potentially bring when showing disrespect. 

He also expressed how he has seen some works portraying aswangs being portrayed and being treated as friends, which should not be the case, because it takes away their deeper meaning and purpose— They’re supposed to be terrifying. 

This made me reflect on my work. I realized that if I just continued that narrative of blending them in, it might just come off as a story about being an outcast, for instance, and it would take away the balance of my objective of showing them in modern times, but still keeping their essence. And based on our discussion, some people still believe these creatures exist, even in urban settings. I figured I don’t want to step on toes or make it seem like the message is solely because they are creatures from the past. 

However, I could build on how the aswang can still be seen as relevant in today’s society through my medium. It points back to a core question that was asked of me: What story did I want to tell with the aswang? 

I asked Sir Karl, “If aswangs were people today, who would they be?” He told me he sees them as rich people, making sense that the wealthy elite are accused of taking away resources and privileges from people of the lower class.

Now, going a bit off-the-record— this happened at a point in time where I was incredibly hesitant about my concept, to the point I was stumbling on my words and not telling exactly what my project was about to Sir Karl or to anyone who genuinely asked.  Personally, I cannot work on anything creatively without being hard on myself, and a lot of factors that passed that could make an overthinker like me panic. I felt unsteady about going forward with this entire project.

Around that time, I had a pretty unfortunate and dreadful incident with an Instagram model. I would rather not go further into detail, but let’s just say people like this certain person belong to a very specific demographic and a status quo I would hate to be stuck in a room with. Then it hit me— I’ve worked with models like this person: Influencer-types who have a certain look, cadence, and online personality that disappears as soon as I finally meet them face to face. It’s like I just talked to an entirely different person through DMs because the voice, tone, personality— and most of the time, even the face— just don’t translate to real life the way they do on their profile.

You may be familiar with them— perfectly curated feeds updated nearly and possibly even every day, selling their “lifestyles” for a living because they want their followers to think they have the life they’re missing out on. They don’t even care if the products they were selling were doing anything good, only if it was bringing them commission. They could go as far as to not care about your boundaries and cause a scene when things don’t go their way. They thrive on the latest gossip, chase trends, and anything to stay in the game, regardless of whether it’s already too saturated. It doesn’t matter if they don’t reach the numbers they want because they’ll feed into their delusions by buying fake followers and likes. Sometimes, they’re only being nice to you now because they want something from you. After that, you’re nothing to them, like they've sucked you dry. 

This exchange I had with this person enraged me— until I started piecing it together.

I may have just had my first aswang encounter— and it showed me a clear direction of where this concept was finally going.