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Discourse: Kon’s Good Morning, Ukay-Ukay, And Finding the Right Topic

Interesting would be the word I would describe COMM 154 thus far.

I entered class fully expecting to be thrown into production projects without much discussion—as was the trend for a few production classes I once enrolled in. Instead, the first few meetings we had in our digital storytelling class involved discussing how semiotics play a significant role in it. 

Why was this important?

Because the root purpose of digital storytelling is to retell actual, real-life stories and experiences through virtual means. Thus, it is important to analyze what we want to tell and how the message will be received by the audience. As such, the four strata (according to Kress and Van Leeuwen) of semiotics are relevant: discourse, design, production, and distribution. It is important to break down the process of our digital storytelling projects into these four stages. 

First, discourse refers to an existing idea or discussion that the project aims to tell. This is followed by design, which involves planning how the discourse will be executed. Production means the actual execution or creation of the output. And, finally, distribution is the stage where audiences view and react to the executed story. 

Putting this in the context of digital storytelling, discourse essentially means the “message” that the digital stories center around. Hence, a large part of the discourse stage involves brainstorming what the creators want to tell their audience, in short: Unsa atong topic? Naturally, when our professor told us to think up a topic for our upcoming digital story project, I was stumped. 

From what I have experienced, it is convention for production projects to be interesting, fresh, and relevant to the times. And though those production courses have taught me valuable lessons, particularly on what audiences want to see, there is the unintentional result of naturally gravitating to overused stories, standard editing styles, and boring angles. We know what the audiences want, so why bother deviating from it? 

However, I was drawn to the idea of Satoshi Kon’s Ohayo, a short 1-minute animation depicting the process of waking up. It was simple and succinct, and I loved it. I loved how Kon captured the seemingly mundane process through unconventional means. A girl, fresh from a presumably enjoyable night out, wakes up to the sound of her alarm. She moves around groggily, getting up, hydrating herself, and taking a shower. Along the way, she appears to leave behind copies of her body, until they eventually catch up to her, making her look full, bright, and whole in the end. She then cheerily greets: “Ohayo!” 

Cut. 

A still from Satoshi Kon's Ohayo. Photo from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4110118/

Thus, the idea popped into my head, an unused pitch that never came to fruition in a previous course. Ukay-ukay! So ingrained in our local culture and often the butt of social media memes—particularly, jokes that ride on the belief that thrift stores are chockfull of second-hand items from the dead. Ukay culture has always fascinated me—not to mention that we all have personal stories relating to it. Long before current social media fads have made thrifting more appealing to the masses, “ukay” culture has long since been prevalent in the Philippines. According to an article written by Austria (2021), ukay was said to come from OFWs reselling second-hand goods to the Philippines, particularly Baguio, during a time when an influx of donations through the United Nations was distributed around Asia. 

Paired with a culture that puts heavy importance on folk spiritualism and sold in a country with a wide gap between socioeconomic classes, exploring personal experiences with ukay superstitions suddenly became a good idea for a digital story.

Now, onto the next stage…

"Ukay" is what we locally call thrifting, the act of purchasing second-hand goods or factory rejects. Photo from https://www.onenews.ph/articles/want-to-help-save-the-environment-shop-for-your-clothes-at-an-ukay-ukay-1 

 

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