When Truth Hits Hard: Halloween, Art, and the Reminder of Justice
The recent Halloween display at Cubao Expo, centered on the theme of extrajudicial killings (EJK), has stirred a contentious conversation about the power and limits of art, the ethical boundaries of public displays, and the unresolved trauma of violence. With a faux corpse on a table marked “Wag Tularan” (“Don’t Imitate”), the display has sparked public debate: Is it a morbid exploitation of national tragedy, or a provocative reminder of justice long delayed?
EJK and the Politics of Memory
“Extrajudicial killing” refers to the unlawful murder of individuals without trial, often carried out by state agents or vigilantes. The term gained prominence under former President Rodrigo Duterte, whose anti-drug campaign reportedly led to thousands of deaths. Human rights organizations, activists, and many Filipinos condemned this violence as a fundamental breach of due process and human rights. Yet the legacy of EJKs remains a painful and often polarizing issue, as the victims’ families continue to seek justice amid ongoing national trauma.
Philosopher C. Wright Mills captured this unease when he noted that the moral struggles of a society stem from “a feeling of uneasiness…based on the experience of a moral uneasiness.” This sentiment resonates among Filipinos still haunted by a lack of justice for those who lost their lives in the drug war. The Cubao Expo display, with its visceral imagery, brings this trauma to the fore, challenging viewers to remember and confront the cost of unchecked violence.
The Role of Art in Confronting Uncomfortable Truths
Art, at its core, is often a reflection of society’s most pressing truths. Simone Weil observed that “art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.” But where is the line between representation and exploitation? This Halloween display, for some, crosses this line, using a symbolic body to evoke both brutality and remembrance.
Slavoj Žižek, a philosopher known for his commentary on ideology and art, would argue that such a display breaks the “fantasmatic shield” that people construct to distance themselves from traumatic realities. He suggests that discomfort, even horror, is sometimes necessary to awaken awareness: “The first thing to do when we are dealing with something perceived as a horror is not to cover it up but to confront it directly.” In this sense, Halloween’s aesthetic of horror could serve not merely to shock but to remind viewers of an unacknowledged legacy of state-sanctioned violence.
Walter Benjamin similarly argued that “there is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism,” meaning that societies must confront the darker aspects of their past to understand their present fully. When art like the Halloween display forces this confrontation, it disrupts complacency, demanding a reckoning with the brutality of extrajudicial killings and a reminder of the unfulfilled pursuit of justice.
The Ethics of Representation and the Power of Provocation
Public reaction to the display has been sharply divided. Critics argue that using EJK as Halloween decor trivializes real trauma, framing it as spectacle rather than solemn critique. Philosopher Hannah Arendt, who examined the nature of violence and evil, might caution that normalizing atrocities as part of ordinary life—especially in something as commercial and festive as Halloween—risks fostering “the banality of evil.” For Arendt, the normalization of horror desensitizes society, creating a culture that tolerates injustice.
But advocates argue that this uncomfortable art form serves another purpose. It acts as a “jarring intervention,” a disruption to the everyday routine that forces society to confront its own moral failings. In this view, Cubao Expo’s display is not an insensitivity to victims but an exposure of societal complacency. As Žižek would explain, art has the potential to “produce a shock to thought,” prompting a rethinking of societal norms and values.
Bellini’s Café, which displayed the controversial décor, has issued a statement distancing itself from the theme, explaining that their usual decorations are simple cobwebs, bats, and spiders. In their apology, the café expressed regret for not reviewing the setup more closely, stating, “We sincerely apologize… Rest assured that we take this matter very seriously, and we understand that this has caused distress. We value your feedback and are committed to ensuring our designs reflect the respect and sensitivity our community deserves.”
Art as a Medium for Justice
Is it possible for such art to contribute to justice? Or does it merely provide a spectacle? Advocates argue that even the discomforting reminder has its place. The display’s visceral imagery, after all, resonates as a form of resistance, a refusal to let public memory gloss over the horrors of state-sanctioned violence. As Simone de Beauvoir argued, “One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others.” For many Filipinos, the lives lost to EJKs are not faceless tragedies—they are wounds on the nation’s conscience.
In this sense, the display aligns with Herbert Marcuse’s idea of art as a “great refusal” against dominant ideologies. When art like this challenges the normalization of violence, it holds society accountable, acting as a public reminder of justice still awaiting recognition.
As Halloween, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day approach—a period traditionally reserved for honoring the dead—this display might serve as a reminder that remembrance and justice can coexist. Perhaps, by blending art with activism, the Cubao Expo installation becomes a communal act of remembering, a call to honor the dignity of those who suffered, and a commitment to prevent such violence from happening again.
In Žižek’s words, “Sometimes, the most painful reality is not violence itself, but our capacity to ignore it.” By bringing EJKs into a Halloween context, Cubao Expo confronts society with the reality of its own apathy. Whether one sees it as insensitive or as an insightful critique, the display challenges people to look at these uncomfortable truths, to remember, and to demand justice in the face of violence long ignored.
The Cubao Expo display reflects a broader trend in contemporary art where unsettling themes are deployed to address complex and often unspoken social realities. In choosing to depict extrajudicial killings (EJKs) as a Halloween theme, the exhibit raises challenging questions about the ethics of representation, the role of art in social justice, and the public’s responsibility to confront traumatic histories. Through this lens, the display isn’t just Halloween décor; it’s a raw and confrontational artwork that forces an encounter with painful truths society might prefer to forget.
Art as Provocation: Breaking the Silence on EJKs
Slavoj Žižek often argues that true art should disrupt the comfort of ideological narratives, compelling society to confront aspects of reality it might wish to ignore. For Žižek, “the duty of philosophy is not to solve problems, but to show how what we experience as a problem is a false problem.” In this sense, the Halloween display does not just represent a disturbing theme; it shatters the sanitized narrative around EJKs, challenging the public to view it not as a distant issue but as an unresolved trauma still very much alive. By forcing viewers to confront this trauma head-on, the display acts as a catalyst, shattering the illusion of normalcy that allows these injustices to be downplayed or ignored.
The Ethics of Public Art: Where Do We Draw the Line?
While art’s role as a social provocateur is vital, the question of ethical responsibility remains. How should artists balance the duty to address serious issues with the potential for causing distress? Simone Weil argued that “attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” suggesting that the mere act of focusing on forgotten or marginalized experiences is itself a powerful ethical act. In the case of Cubao Expo’s Halloween display, the portrayal of EJKs could be seen as an attempt to direct public attention to those lives lost without justice.
However, critics argue that such depictions risk trivializing real suffering. Philosopher Judith Butler warns of the dangers in representing trauma, emphasizing the need for sensitivity to avoid turning victims into “mere spectacle.” She argues that society often “enjoys the comfort of forgetting, the warmth of not being reminded of what it does not want to face.” This is a delicate balance: while art’s role may be to remind and provoke, it must also avoid exploiting suffering for aesthetic purposes.
Reflecting on the Public’s Reaction: Denial and Discomfort
Public reactions to the Halloween display reveal a deeper discomfort: an inclination to look away from unresolved injustices rather than confront them. This reaction is consistent with what Hannah Arendt famously called the “banality of evil,” where ordinary people, in their unwillingness to question or disrupt, become complicit in systemic violence. Arendt contends that when societies fail to confront such moral failures, they risk perpetuating them. Ignoring the unsettling reality of EJKs as part of Filipino society’s past (and perhaps even present) is itself a moral stance, one that privileges comfort over accountability.
Philosopher Michel Foucault’s concept of “biopower” sheds light on the deeper mechanisms at play. In the context of the Duterte administration’s drug war, biopower is evident in the state’s exertion of control over life and death, deciding who is deemed worthy of life and who becomes “disposable.” This Halloween display, in its shock value, might be read as a critique of the societal structures that allow such biopolitical control to go unquestioned. Foucault argued that power operates most insidiously when it is invisible; by making EJKs visible in such an unsettling way, the Cubao display forces viewers to confront power’s hidden mechanisms and their own potential complicity in allowing them to go unchecked.
Art as a Medium of Memory and Justice
Art’s potential to serve as a site of memory is crucial in societies grappling with histories of trauma and violence. The Halloween display can be seen as a kind of “counter-monument,” a concept explored by theorist James E. Young, where traditional commemorative practices are subverted to engage viewers in active remembrance. Unlike conventional monuments, which can risk sanitizing or simplifying history, counter-monuments challenge viewers to engage with history’s more troubling aspects.
By referencing the ongoing impact of EJKs, the display could be interpreted as a call to prevent “cultural amnesia.” The specter of Halloween—typically reserved for ghoulish fun—takes on a heavier significance when contextualized within the real-world horror of extrajudicial killings. Young describes counter-monuments as “an art form that doesn’t merely commemorate but implicates the viewer, involving them in the act of remembering.” The Cubao exhibit, therefore, doesn’t just present horror; it implicates the viewer, suggesting that their silence, their avoidance, or their discomfort may contribute to a national forgetting.
The Need for Justice and the Limitations of Public Memory
In the words of Walter Benjamin, “the past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again.” This idea underscores the importance of timing and context in memory work; societies have brief windows to acknowledge and address collective trauma before it is suppressed or forgotten. For those still waiting for justice, the memory of EJKs cannot be relegated to the past. By making EJKs a theme in such a public and controversial way, the Halloween display insists that the issue of justice is still unresolved.
The public response to the display has ignited a vital debate on accountability and remembrance. Simone de Beauvoir argued that to be “in bad faith” is to deny reality to avoid discomfort; she would likely view the backlash to this display as indicative of a society unwilling to face its own moral failures. The outcry reveals how difficult it is for a community to hold itself accountable, especially when the very system responsible for the violence continues to shape public memory and discourse.
Confronting the Truth: Is Discomfort a Necessary Price for Justice?
Ultimately, the Cubao Expo’s Halloween display challenges the boundaries of what is acceptable in public art, forcing society to ask whether certain uncomfortable truths should be shielded from view. Yet, as Žižek reminds people, that discomfort is often the first step toward truth. “To be truly liberated,” he writes, “means to confront the traumas of the past and not shy away from them.” Through its shocking imagery, the display breaks open a space for dialogue about justice, power, and memory.
Art is not meant to comfort; it is meant to provoke. The controversy surrounding Cubao Expo’s Halloween display speaks to the complex power of art to disturb, to remind, and perhaps most importantly, to hold society accountable. Halloween may traditionally celebrate imagined horrors, but this display has thrust real horror into public consciousness, challenging a nation to reconcile with its past and confront its present.
In this sense, the Cubao Expo halloween display does more than shock; it exposes the societal discomfort that accompanies unspeakable truths. Art’s role here is neither purely ethical nor purely aesthetic; it is existential. It forces people to grapple with the dissonance between a desire for comfort and the duty to remember, pushing people to confront the unresolved trauma that echoes throughout Filipino society.
References
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