Essays: Invisibility versus flying - Filipino Style

I am an Asian girl who dreamed my days away in the clouds. So guess what power I wanted to have if I was ever given a chance.

DARNA

In the Philippines we have our own version of Superwoman. And growing up I wanted to be like her. Darna's alter-ego is the poor Narda who is a plain but crippled young girl from the province. She turns into Darna whenever she asks her brother Ding to give her a white stone. "Ding, ang bato! Darna!" is an iconic statement in Philippine comics that lent itself to movies and television.

Young girls who find strength within them to overcome their flaws and disabilities put Darna in their minds as the icon that would let them, land-bound young women, become the heroine who flies off to save the day. And in a country that is forever oppressed, formerly by conquerors and nowadays by its own twisted political system, Darna is a necessity. She represents the need of the people to believe and to hope.

So you can't blame the masses when they get hooked on more versions of this woman that comes out of television and movies.

Generation Gaps in full flight

But as an adult people have forgotten that the real reason why they wanted to fly in the first place was because they want to be free. Our reason for wanting to take flight became the need for speed. This is the reason why ideas like those that are in the movie Jumper (people transporting from one place to another is nothing new but this is one of the most recent examples) are appealing to younger generations. The line between superpowers and technological advances is becoming thinner everyday. Flight is no longer a super power. If Iron Man could make it happen, albeit the slightly comical way of flying, maybe flight would be an option that could be used for any reason. One of which could be revenge.

Invisible Villains

Invisibility is a covert power. Initially it appears to be more of a defensive power than an offensive one. But what lies deep within abilities of this kind is intention. Once ability is corrupted by the purpose that a person uses it for, it looses its natural capacity to do both good and bad things. The darker the intention, the more destructive the ability becomes.

In the Philippines, more specifically in the province of Cavite there was a man who lived his days yielding an amulet that allows him to become invisible whenever he was stepping on mud. He is more popularly known as Nardong Putik. He was a famous assassin in the province; the police wanted to catch him and did several times. Unfortunately mud could be found even inside jails. So he repeatedly escaped incarceration. Other assassins wanted him death to gain the number one spot. But he always managed to disappear before they could catch him. One story spoke of his disappearance in the middle of a wedding ceremony. It seems a little water and soil is easy to carry along anywhere, even inside a church. It was not until another amulet wielding individual apparently caught him by draining the water out of the land making it impossible for Nardong Putik to find the key to triggering his invisibility. And thus, the invisible villain was finally killed.

Transparent choices

So it seems when one chooses one power over the other there is an initial impression of whether a person, child he may be, is a hero or a villain in the making. At least that is what the myths of my youth tell me.

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