Philippine
Modernity
&
Popular Culture
A final term requirement (assignment) in the course subject
GEE 10: Philippine Pop Culture
Nicko Matta
BSEE-3A
Ramelo M. Mon Jr.
Instructor
Introduction
According to the 2013 Yahoo-Nielsen Survey, the top three media
consumption outlets in the Philippines come from television, radio, and the
increasingly growing usage of the internet. Through these media outlets, the
government’s so-called fourth estate, one can deduce that watching favorite
shows on television, listening to radio programs, or even browsing the worldwide
web can have political, social, and economic implications. This module,
therefore, will discuss these implications — the three interconnected levels of
Philippine life, said above —- and relate it to the mainstream culture in the
Philippines to give the public an overview of this obvious yet overlooked scene
in Philippine media studies.
This paper aims to (1) to analyze the phenomenon of popular culture
within the context of the Philippines and to locate its origin; (2) linking
mainstream culture to the use of traditional media such as television and radio,
and the advent of social media and digital media; (3) to locate interlocking
concepts concerning popular culture and social media in the political,
economic and social aspects of everyday life in the Philippines to provide some
overview of the current state of media studies in the Philippines.
However, one of the study's latent aims is to promote introspection among
the public about their use or personal media use in their everyday lives.
Popular Culture in the Philippines
"Creating a culture must begin with a base, and that base must necessarily be
the culture of the Filipino people if this can be differentiated by the
encrustations that colonial rule has built on it."
According to National Artist for Literature Bienvenido Lumbera in his
book Revaluation: Essays on Philippine Literature, Theatre, and Modern Culture
(1984), popular culture is very distinct from Filipino folk culture and nationalistic
culture.
In a nutshell, folk culture is the way to live in a specific time place and
depicts a few people's habits and how they can cope with nature. Nationalist
culture is the culture produced by colonial resistance, with a people’s group at
a given time and location. These two are distinct from mainstream culture that
can be traced also during the time of Philippine Hispanization.
According to Lumbera, the Spaniards developed and used popular
culture in the Philippines to the native Filipinos or Indios through plays and
literature to get the natives 'hearts and win them over. It is possible to trace the
colonial origins of popular culture found in the Philippines by looking at notable
trends in Philippine literature. The first permanent settlement in Spain started to
replace the native culture with a Christian and European tradition. Under the
tutelage of missionaries, the children of the native elite became a central
community of intelligentsia called 'ladinos' as they were instrumental in 'taking
into the vernacular, literary forms which were to be instruments for the' peace 'of
the natives.'
Forms of popular theater and literature such as "the pasyon, sinakulo, and
corido ensured Christianity’s acceptance and spread and the comedy and
awit did the same for the monarchy. Global culture as adopted by the Spanish
has been "ordinary" to the point that it was a "watering-down of SpanishEuropean culture to win over the public to the colonial regime's 'ideology.' At
that time, colonial authorities created popular culture, with the aid of local
intelligentsia, to promote the interests of the Church and the State.
However, once they saw the influence of mass culture and learned how
to work their way as propaganda, the native intelligentsia soon used the Spanish
tool against them. The native intelligentsia used the same types of popular
culture in the 19th century, through the Propaganda movement to “undermine
the influence of the oppressive friars and mobilize the people to bring an end to
colonial rule" One example of that is Marcelo H's work. Del Pilar, as he used
prayers like 'Aba, Ginoong Maria' and 'Ama Namin' in a kind of satire to hit the
violent Spanish Brothers. The rise of American colonization introduced to the
Philippines the properly so-called, mainstream culture. The liberal approach
towards the printing press quickly expanded the dissemination of types of
popular culture through radio, television, and film. Then not only by these types
but also in digital media such as films.
In the Philippine market, Hollywood films had a near-monopoly,
particularly in the absence of European films due to World War I. Early on, the
local intelligentsia had the same apprehensions about mass media as they
called it advertisement or art vulgarization. According to Lumbera, the local
intelligentsia noted that “Popular literature as a product intended for a mass
market was seen as a challenge to serious artistic practice, since the writers
accommodated his art to the demands of the publishers and editors who were
more interested in sales than in aesthetics."
Moreover, "... common culture is not produced by the masses ... it is rather
a culture generated either by the ruling elite or by representatives of the
intelligentsia in the employment of that elite, for the consumption of the people;"
it is ".... 'packaged' entertainment or art intended for the benefit of rulers, be
they colonial administrators or native bureaucrats and businessmen."
To see it through the lens of Lumbera, "Popular culture is power, and
anyone who uses it to control minds is likely to have their literary and technical
machinery turned against him when the minds he has exploited discover his
power as a political tool."
The Netizen Principle and the Democratization of Media
The word netizen, although popularly used in present times, is in fact a
word from Michael Hauben's theory (1996) is a corrupted term from the
expression "Net Person." According to Hauben as netizens, in fact geographical
separation is replaced by presence in the same virtual space called the
internet.
Moreover, along with the power to use the internet is the reporter's power
provided to the netizen for a netizen may be a source of primary knowledge
about certain topics or issues. Hauben deeply warns that the internet can be a
"source of opinion," though he says a netizen should train him / her to distinguish
real from fabricated knowledge. This prophecy will soon be reflected in the
book by Graeme Turner called the Demotic Turn (2010), but even news stories
are still distorted in certain drastic ways to fit the type of "infotainment" preferred
by the public. There's an increase in opinionated reporting, according to Turner,
as reporters prefer to bend the reporting to stories they sometimes support.
Tabloidization is a clear example of this or sensationalizing small news stories and
making a big deal of it.
The agenda-setting theory
McCombs and Shaw's Agenda-Setting theory can be summarized by
suggesting the media induces people to concentrate their attention on
something within a certain agenda. It can make people believe that something
happens when something isn't happening or offer special attention or
concentrate on other subjects or issues and hype them to give the illusion that
something major is happening.
To offer an example, the idea of the agenda-setting can be seen in a
newspaper in which the headline is supposed to be the biggest news there is,
and the other things, decreasing in font size and the farther its position from the
front page, the less importance it has.
Similarly, the more urgent problem it is in a television show where the
reporter or news anchor offers a certain news too much airtime or depending
on the structure of the news items. This theory can also be applied on the radio,
or on digital media like the internet.
The political economy of media
According to the Propaganda Model by Hermann and Chomsky, a
model they used to test the various political-economic consequences of mass
media, there are many filters to be used in relation to the subject for testing the
propaganda machine of mass media. These are the following filters:
1. The size, concentrated ownership, proprietary capital, benefit focus of the
numerous mass media companies.
2. Content as the main source of revenue for the mass media.
3. The media depend on the information given by government company
and these "experts" supported and approved by those sources and power
agents.
4. The size, concentrated ownership, proprietary capital, benefit focus of the
numerous mass media companies.
5. Content as the main source of revenue for the mass media.
6. The media depend on the information given by government company
and these "experts" supported and approved by those sources and power
agents.
Analysis
Based on the history and roots of popular culture in the Philippines, the
emergence of popular culture is due to innovations such as television, radio and
the Internet, and the popularization of these innovations as a result of their use in
everyday culture. Nevertheless, media apparently innocent use or use beholds
control at its interstices in various ways. As stated, this module will explore three
levels of how media spreads popular culture, affecting aspects of Filipino life
such as political, cultural, and social.
Political- Economic Aspect
The economic dimension is the simpler one to work out among the three.
American culture with the advent of technology such as television and radio,
according to Lumbera, soon eroded the notion of art and made it appear to be
consumable and a commodity. Like other artists of the period, he called it
vulgarization of art, as he said. He meant that the use of technology made art
forms common and were tailor-fit to exactly suit the taste of the wider audience,
losing their content in the process. This trend or outrage can also be seen in
Turner’s claim about the emergence of infotainment if one might call it.
Infotainment is the tendency to make a problem seemingly important
enough to give the public enough or little new information, but more so,
entertainment. Infotainment is one of the most searched websites and the most
viewed sites in the Philippines, according to the Yahoo-Nielsen 2013 Survey.
This means a lot of meaningless news we see on television or internet that
can be ignored as a fad but have been given the limelight to entertain people
and people tend to buy it. That means a lot of trivial news that we see on
television or internet that can be dismissed as a fad but has been given the
limelight to entertain people and people tend to buy it.
Cross-promotion is a term that refers to a very subtle way of promoting an
advertisement inside another product, or the like. Apart from recognizing that
the reason for this so-called "vulgarization of art" and the "rise of infotainment" to
draw advertisers to advertise in commercial breaks during television or radio
shows, or popping up on blogs, cross-promotion has been a wide-ranging
phenomenon and people can sense it but don't see it straight in the eye.
Imagine watching a film and seeing the main actor being used in it
promoting a product, say coffee, and in one of the scenes he or she prepares
and drinks the coffee— that is cross-promotion. The tacit or unconscious form of
endorsing goods.
Even on the internet, several papers are planted only to create an
advertising, and these are also the papers of infotainment. Both video games
have cross-promoting events, or even radio jockeys do so in a very smooth and
conversational way. Cross-promotion has been widely done for many years, but
the problem doesn't stop there. Cross-promoting practices in various media
outlets cannot always be discreet, for many are now specifically engaged
in these practices and in connection with the sacrifice of Lumbera's art
grievance; It can already be seen that media does not proliferate art or highvalue material, but sacrifices all of them, including the content, form and nature
of popular culture, just to use it as an advertisement.as an expam, a whole
dialog of story plot can be bent, to bend, bow and scrape to the demands of
the key benefactor — product endorsements.
Socio- Political Aspect
It was a famous saying that someone who has possession of economic
power is also controlling the political force. In the study of pop culture and the
media in the Philippines, one can already see that the economic and political
factors were extremely mutually beneficial conditions for each other. This
argument is rational because, according to Herman and Chomsky, media
generally gets all the money from advertising and whoever has the bigger
support gets the media coverage, or initiatives will be bent as to how their
product endorsement will fit in with cross-promotion.
However, it is important to remember that the influence of the media
resides not only in the economic but also in the hegemony of information, as
Herman and Chomsky also cited. There are limited channels from which media
can access information, and with it they regulate — government, corporation,
and the like — whatever goes in and out of the tube.
Moreover, the media relationship with its audience must also be tested.
According to popular culture, media is often used to impose a certain impact
on its audiences and the resulting relationship is a political one in which the
media organization or agency is the one regulating here.
According to McCombs and Shaw’s Agenda-Setting Theory, through
conditioning our minds in a very latent manner particularly through salience,
media can make us think about something. It means that if ever the media
company wants you to think about a political stand or purchase the specific
perfume, they will do it in repetition and using multiple promotional tactics by
cross-promotion. It means that if ever the advertising corporation needs you to
think about a political stance or buy the specific perfume, they can do so by
cross-promotion through repetition and use several promotional strategies.
This could be equivocal with the fact that the "naked" news is being
produced in many western news firms not because they need viewers to watch
news, but rather to make them consume and gain their share in the advertising
arena. One may say that to be sensationalized and newsworthy certain news
stories should be fictitious or bloated.
Therefore, by its powers, the media implicitly commands the people to
act in a way that is in their favor.
However, this concept is increasingly shifting by manipulation, as there’s
something called media democratization that's linked to the growth of social
media. The democratization of media over the internet can be attributed to
breaking the media conglomerates 'control over the information flow. Michael
Hauben's idea of the Netizen, when he coined the concept in the late 1990s,
proposed that the physical borders of the universe dissolved through the faster
transmission of information and communication over the Internet and the result
was infinite and transcendental — quite a high-tech benchmark of the 21st
century.
Hauben also imagined the democratic influence of the media, as
everyone can voice their opinions over the internet, but that can only be
achieved if everybody in society, including those on the periphery, will be given
the opportunity to express their opinions. The penetration of internet use in the
Philippines is more than thirty per cent as of 2012, and is gradually growing
(Yahoo-Nielsen, 2013).
According to the same study, more Filipinos use tablets and cell phones to
access the internet, and with the country's increase in smart phones, we may
expect that the expected number may increase exponentially. Nevertheless,
media democratization is still evident in society, even though away from
Hauben's ideal 100 percent penetration of society, and this is through social
networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like. The most
used site is among the three, Facebook (Yahoo-Nielsen, 2013). Public
opinion rises from these pages, the proliferation of liberal ideas occurs
particularly in the Philippines because the government never censors the
content, although attempts have been made in the law on cybercrime.
The agenda and capacity seemed to prove its political worth in the
Philippines last September 2013, when many Filipinos across the Philippines and
the world joined a simultaneous protest they called the "Million People March"
(Garchitorena, 2013), as if an Arab or Persian Spring that was so- Twitter or
Facebook Revolution, through social media facilitation. In everyday life one
can see the leverage made by media conglomerates in the social media scene
by making an account for famous reporters and television or radio
channels so that they can also make real- broadcasting simultaneously
with the real- updates of dissemination of social media information
(Garchitorena, 2013).
That soon proves to be useful as media outlets make news from public
opinion that is often found in tweets or posts on social networking sites, as
predicted earlier by the rise of talk radios (Turner, 2010). There are also parts
where pure viewers are made to report on a first-hand account of a storm surge
or something via mobile devices, and send the clip over the internet instead of
sending a actual, professional reporter to check the situation out. This trend
would however prove beneficial if the idea of a democratized society by
Hauben will materialize through the internet where all people are given access,
plus the requisite training to voice their selves as Netizens.
Conclusion
To summarize, through Lumbera's research, modern culture was first
introduced and provided flesh and bone. It will be the pillar of the media
we see today, and it has fleshed out reasons why media in the Philippines
commands cultural, political, and social influence. Via many media theories, it
has been shown that the main objective of the media through the dissemination
of pop culture produces a commercialized environment because it generates
money from advertisements, and whoever controls economic power always
controls the political.
News outlets may also promote pop culture in order to make their viewers
act in the way they can favor them, often because they monopolize the stream
of information. This can also be offset by media democratization by promoting
social networking sites, and by spreading thoughts on the internet as a netizen. It
can trigger leverage, but the full potential for complete democratization may
not be completely realized until all people in society can have full access
with the aforementioned technology. It can also have down-effects for media
outlets, as if "empowering" them, to use Netizens as the primary sources of
knowledge.
This can also be overcome with awareness if the public learns how to use
social media to their benefit. "Pop culture is power, and anyone who uses it
to control minds would inevitably find his literary and technical machinery
turned against him when the minds he has exploited discover his power as a
political tool" (Lumbera, 1984).
The future of the political, cultural, and social facilities of social media as a
resource, or a weapon, against media conglomerates and advertising
machinery, or the government, or any institutional agenda, can still be
achieved if the general public, particularly those on the margins who have
always been exploited by the false media images, are to discover and harness
their full potential.
Reference and Supplementary Material
Online Supplementary Reading Material
1. Garchitorena, Aj. Pop Culture and the Rise of Social Media in the Philippines:
An Overview. Retrieved from
http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/ronda2014/Culture-Philippines.pdf on
March 30, 2020