Bangaw Shades

The Bangaw Shades

Once fashionable way back when Lennon and company were on top of the world and Led Zeppelin was flaunting their musical wizardry all over the European airwaves while experimenting with Satanism, the bangaw shades has now made a bad-ass comeback. Resurrected by Jennifer Lopez and immortalized by Bono, it now finds itself back in mass-production, accessorizing millions of people, enhancing their aesthetic value. It is a symbol of humanity itself. Woaw!

We have to recognize its place in the order of meaning of things. Trying to be cool and cute aside, I think it bears profound significance. Culture is a hallmark of man. No other species has a highly evolved neocortex and a consequent sophisticated psyche, which subsumes consciousness and personality, that when they form society they create a highly dynamic culture. Besides religion, our sense of fashion and esthetics are two components of culture that separates us from all other species and exalts us into humanness. Fashion and esthetics are irrational but human, illogical but beautiful. Exactly like the bangaw shades.

Freud once said that civilization is a collective product of man’s sublimation-a maneuver of the mind that transforms socially unacceptable impulses into productive and socially esteemed behavior, just like painting nude is a sublimation of ones desire to have sex. Psychoanalysis proposes the idea that man’s behavior is the product of a complex cut-throat psychic process that eventually transforms taboo impulses into normative behavior. The resulting personality is a socially suitable one, a façade that covers and enhances the presentability-including the esthetics-of what is behind it. Exactly what the bangaw shades does to its wearer.

A facial ornament that conceals the window to the soul, the bangaw shades adds enigma to the persona. Instead of having direct view of the person’s naked eye, one deals with a face highlighted by smoked glass. It finishes the face. A face of a species made up of a concoction of primal urges, headstrong emotions and conceited rationality all wrapped in a range of behavior serving as a social façade. The bangaw shades finishes the person.

This article, I think, has lost track of its point. Haha. Pardon me for indulging in this freewheeling monologue without a compass and dragging you along with me. But my gut-feel tells me that even without finishing with a solid conclusion, we all grasped the unsaid inferences.

This all started with a sight of a Trinitian trotting her way down the campus “catwalk” in front of the CAS building. She was the quintessential beautiful Trinitian. Oblivious of her surroundings, she made heads turn, including mine. And she was wearing the ubiquitous bangaw shades like a secret weapon for attracting attention. Then I thought about what would Freud think about her and her shades.

I am not proposing a theory on why the society and/or the individual came up with the bangaw shades. I just wanted to flirt with the possible symbolisms it bears regarding humanity, primarily from the point of view psychology and psychoanalysis. That is such a Herculean role for just a little piece of plastic. What the heck, that piece if plastic fascinates me.

With this essay serving as serendipitous primer for Psychoanalytic Theory, I hope I’ve justified my opening paragraph. Freud implied that there are many persons residing inside us. The bangaw shades makes everyone of them cool.