Globalisation and tradition: Paradoxes in
Philippine television and culture
Josefina M. C. Santos
How has Philippine television impacted on the cultural identity of Filipinos? In turn, how has
Philippine culture shaped Philippine television? Around these two key questions revolve the
discussions contained in this article, which first situates the debate within the context of the larger
society in which both Philippine television and culture are developing.
Inasmuch as culture is socially determined, it is appropriate to seek to clarify the dynamics of the
society that contains both Philippine culture and television. Due especially to two developments -
rapid deterioration of the global environment, and the rapid advance in communication technology
- it has become even more urgent and necessary to view society as part of a global system.
Globalisation - the so-called increasing interdependence of societies and flows in capital,
products, people and ideas across national borders - has accentuated a global view of societies.
Dominant modernity and nationalism
Certain countries and economies - the United States, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada
and now Korea, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong - differ sharply in social structure from the
large number of societies comprising Africa, Latin America, Oceania and the rest of Asia.
It is generally accepted that the former countries or economies are industrialised or industrial, and
in addition, digitally driven. These societies are characterised by a distinct orientation towards
productivity - high output from low inputs. Supporting the high productivity goals of such industrial
or ?post-industrial? social systems are their scientific cultures - cultures that in theory and
practice place a premium and focus on the development and application of natural and social
science. Societies of this type greatly value success and achievement - the accumulation of
wealth based on high productivity, and of highly productive skills. Thus, merit - having the
necessary productive skills for certain jobs or positions - is a socially respected virtue.
Employment is, therefore, merit-based and professional.
In the industrial and post-industrial countries, nationalism is a key element in society and culture.
Nationals are expected to dominate local corporations, and nationally owned firms are expected
to dominate local industries and markets. People in the modern countries have even come to look
upon a number of their nationally produced commodities as cultural cum technological icons that
embody national greatness, evoke national pride, and deserve national protection--from American
cars, Japanese gadgets, German machines to French film. Under a culture of nationalism,
national languages dominate discourses in each of these countries, and locally produced artistic
forms with a distinctive ?national? flavour and character normally dominate the cultural scene. All
these norms in industrial and post-industrial societies go beyond mere values. They are
expressed and realised as a ?way of life? - as the dominant practices of these societies.
Pre-modern societies
But, in contrast, even under conditions of globalisation, societies and cultures in the poor
countries have in fact retained much of their pre-industrial features. Third World societies and
cultures tend to promote life ways, chances, norms and values based not on productivity but on
inheritance and commercial guile. In the Philippines, life ways and chances are largely defined by
one?s membership or non-membership in, access or non-access to, the buena familia, the upperclass
landed or merchant elites. Though public, the largely locally owned corporations are
basically family affairs, in which control is concentrated in the hands of family members and
cronies and then bequeathed from one generation to the next through inheritance.
These elites are the contemporary successors of the caciques, the colonial-era owners of large
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landed estates, who magnified their wealth and power by entering into trade as exporters,
importers, wholesalers, and franchise-holders. It has become part of conventional wisdom that
those who have acquired or maintained their upper-class statuses have done so as a result not
only of inheritances, but also of their abilidad - the ability to capture and dominate markets as a
result of machiavellian trading skills involving monopolist strategies, rent-taking and wheeling-anddealing--
without the culture and practice of technical innovation, as of a Bill Gates. Economic
patronage is another norm in Philippine society. . Since colonial times, in return for small loans
and grants during times of emergencies, access to jobs, access to home lots or farm lots,
protection from personal enemies, they have been expected to owe to their padrinos (patrons) a
lifetime ?debt of gratitude? (utang na loob) in the form of various unpaid services and loyalty.
Jobs are considered not a right but a privilege granted to them by their padrinos, who either
employ them directly, or recommend them to friends and relatives for employment.
Filipino fatalism
The poor who comprise at least 70% of Philippine society cope with their poverty by embracing
an anti-scientific culture of fatalism and mysticism. Many Filipinos of various classes view their
lives to be governed by suwerte (good luck), malas (bad luck) and gulong ng palad (wheel of
fate). They regard their successes and achievements as suwerte and their failures or frustrations
as malas. Often they console themselves with the notion that it is simply life?s mysterious flow
that one miserable today will find fulfilment tomorrow, and vice-versa, and that this mysterious
wheel of change will somehow and some day bring them success.
Commerce of politics
Local as well as national politics remains dominated by political clans, who also comprise the
largest landowners or business barons in their respective regions. Again, inheritance rather than
merit is the key factor in choosing political candidates. Candidates are either members or
protégés of these landed or business elite families. Thus political posts are frequently dynasties,
whereby spouses, children and other relatives succeed the incumbent.
At the same time, Philippine politics and elections are also increasingly becoming a mercantile
transaction: politicians buy votes and dispense patronage largely through local ward leaders in
exchange for electoral support and loyalty. It is common political knowledge that to win key
political posts, politicians must muster the funds needed to buy the loyalty and support of local
ward leaders and their constituencies. The other side of the commercial transaction is that cronies
among big business elites finance the patronage election money and in return expect political
favours that protect or promote their respective businesses.
The merchant character of this set up lies not only in the fact that politicians are able to buy votes
cheaply - from 100 to 500 pesos per voter. More importantly, the merchant character lies in the
reality that the electorate tends to be short-changed in this transaction. With the graft in
government estimated by the Ombudsman to reach at least PhP 40 billion per year, the poor and
middle class tax payers lose more than they earn from this transaction.
Another merchant character of the Philippine patronage politics is the shortfall in delivery of
services versus promises. In modern societies, political parties and candidates promise reform
and changes, but in most cases they basically are able to deliver on these promises - prosperity
for the majority, and the maintenance of a large middle class. Philippine candidates seek to
attract votes with promises to reduce or eliminate poverty, to modernise society. But the
contrasting, typical experience of Philippine politics is that promises have rarely been realised and
in fact have led to exacerbation rather than reduction of poverty, a further widening rather than
narrowing of the gap between social reality and the goal of modernisation, a dwindling rather than
expansion of the middle class.
In contrast to modern societies where politics, political parties and elections are based on
articulation of issues and effective involvement of the middle class, Philippine politics is based on
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patronage coupled with mere image unsupported by substance. Philippine political parties tend to
be mere alliances among the business elite, and so tend to have identical programmes that offer
no real choice for the poor and middle-class electorate. What is then offered in the competition for
votes is an advantage in patronage (the more vote-buying money, the better the chances of
winning) and image. With the spread of mass communication, especially film, television and
tabloids, image-projection and political advertising, usually the work of public relations experts,
has increasingly been a key factor in Philippine elections on the national level.
Three of the last seven Philippine presidents were largely elected on the basis of their media
projection as ?men of the masses? and ?champions of the poor? - on pro-poor and populist
public media-driven images, two on ?nationalist? images, one on ?a democratising? image, and
another on a ?modernise? image. But because of the lack of a dominant critical political culture
and discourse, the hopes have more often than not proven to be false and the images have
turned out to be inaccurate and misleading in the end. Both the poor and middle class electorates
regard policy-making and political influence as the natural preserve of the upper classes, just as
the masses of subjects under colonial rule were expected to simply submit to policies and
decisions laid down by the colonisers and the cacique allies in government.
Active citizens
Civil society is active in the Philippines with the proliferation of non-government organisations and
private voluntary organisations. But civil society groups in the Philippines have a differential,
lopsided impact on policy based primarily on the classes they represent. Private local big
business organisations - representing upper-class interests - exercise a powerful clout and
influence on policy and public affairs. On the other hand, the effective impact of middle class
organisations - professionals, small business - on policy and public affairs is minimal, compared
to that the upper class groups.
Its minimal clout largely owes to the small size of the middle class, its subordinate role in
business, and its lack of resources for patronage and public relations. The situation is even more
negative in the case of under-class or lower-income class organisations. This differential, highly
skewed clout of civil society underscores the weakness or superficiality of democratic politics and
political culture in a pre-modern society as the Philippines.
Failure to modernise
In contrast to culture in the modern societies, a sense of nationhood has yet to dominate
Philippine society and culture since colonial times. This condition is rooted in three centuries of
Spanish rule and American colonisation, which retarded the growth of local industry and
engendered a deep inferiority complex. But what is popularly known in the Philippines as ?the
colonial mentality? has survived and in many ways even deepened in the postcolonial era. Behind
this complex and mentality has been a continuing failure of society to modernise, making it
inevitable for the country to remain dependent on foreign capital, products, technology, markets
and employment.
Four types of TV programme
It is this pre-modern, pre-democratic and pre-national culture and society that constitutes the
context of Philippine television today. It is this culture that resonates both loudly and subtly in
Philippine television. It is this culture that can be said to underlie what I call a symbiosis of four
basic types of content and form of television programmes which comprise the viewing fare of
Philippine audiences.
These types are:
∑ Foreign programs presented in their original, complete form.
Globalisation and tradition: Paradoxes in Philippine television and culture 3 of 7
∑
∑ Hybrid basically foreign-produced programs partly modified to enhance local
reception.
∑
∑ Hybrid locally produced programs largely imitative of foreign formats or based on
key foreign content input or elements.
∑
∑ Locally produced programmes with local traditional content, or content espousing
local, traditional values.
∑
The Filipino upper and upper-middle classes provide a captive market for American channels and
programming. They make up a majority ? 55% - of the country?s subscribers of cable television,
which, on the whole, is almost entirely (99%) geared to English-language, mostly foreign
programming. The familiarity of the upper and upper-middle classes with Western consumption
lifestyles make it easier for them to be accustomed to a variety of Western television
representations and media content - from language and idiom to fashion and settings. Though
based in a fundamentally different, pre-modern production social context and culture, the Filipino
upper and upper-middle classes paradoxically can relate to the modern culture in these Englishspeaking
societies represented in the television programs.
It is the similarity in consumer lifestyles and formal education that makes the Filipino upper and
upper-middle classes greatly receptive to foreign television productions in their complete, original
form. In turn, it is the contrast in consumer lifestyles, formal education and discourse experience
between the Filipino lower and lower-middle classes on one hand, and Western/foreign upper and
middle classes that prevents the former from easily receiving foreign television representations.
And yet, the Filipino lower and lower-middle classes are the major markets for global consumerproduct
corporations, which are also the major television and media advertisers. It is these two
realities that must be reconciled and matched - the local, folk culture of the lower-middle and
underclasses and their being the country?s major corporate consumer-goods market and
advertisers? target television audience.
Success of telenovelas
It is in this sense that the second type of programme - hybrid basically foreign-produced
programmes partly modified to enhance local reception - comes into the Philippine picture. Its
archetype is the Mexican telenovela dubbed in Tagalog/Filipino, a soap opera genre which has
attained phenomenal popularity and unprecedented ratings in the Philippines. The telenovela?s
appeal rests on three combined qualities. One, dubbed in Tagalog/Filipino, it is easily understood
by the grassroots. Two, it features mestizos and mestiza actors, fulfilling the colonial fancy of
Filipino viewers. Three, it depicts pre-modern, folk themes and settings.
In contrast to stories based on modern themes, the Mexican telenovela is attuned to the
predominant Filipino folk psyche precisely because of its pre-modern, largely folk character.
Globalisation and tradition: Paradoxes in Philippine television and culture 4 of 7
Filipinos of various classes identify with the character of the poor peasant woman who becomes a
landlord-merchant in the end - a fantasy in pre-modern social mobility and change.
The other Philippine archetype of the hybrid basically foreign-produced programme partly
modified to enhance local reception is the Japanese anime (cartoon) dubbed in Tagalog/Filipino.
The 1990s have seen a revival in the Philippines of the Japanese cartoon, creating a enormous
following among young Filipino television viewers. Its popularity today, which exceeds that in the
1970s, is due to another combination of qualities. One, its being dubbed in Tagalog/Filipino,
facilitating audience comprehension and acceptance. Two, the rich, attractive and dynamic
visuals of the anime made possible by advanced and expensive animation technology. Three,
their evocation of folk, pre-modern themes. Many of the Japanese animated characters most
popular with Filipino children, such as Sailor Moon and Streetfighters, are no longer
technologically-oriented, and in that sense, modern, but pre-modern in that they are endowed
with supernatural and mystical powers.
It is to the first and second types of programmes that Philippine-based television productions offer
either no real competition, or no competition altogether. In the first type, Philippine-based
productions, even if local producers wanted to, simply cannot replicate the Caucasian actors and
setting with credibility. The comparative advantage of the Mexican telenovela over Philippine
television drama is the markedly mestizo features of its actors and actresses. In the case of
Japanese animation, the Philippine entertainment business is still too socially ?underdeveloped? -
pre-modern and technologically backward - to produce any local competition to it.
But these two comparative advantages of foreign productions - high technological/financial
capabilities and mestizo facial features - are not so overwhelmingly decisive as to discourage a
range of local Filipino television production. Except in the case of animation, foreign productions
do not enjoy a technological/financial edge over local productions, the two leading Filipino-owned
television networks are able to buy Japanese, European or American state-of-the-art cameras
and transmission equipment needed to produce dramas, sitcoms, talk shows and news
programmes, and documentaries of high technical quality.
Local imitations
It is these strengths of local television production that allow for the third type of Philippine
television production - hybrid locally-produced programs largely imitative of foreign formats or
based on key foreign content input or elements. These include: (a) Musical shows or segments
largely based on the singing or playing of foreign songs and music; (b) Copycatting - the largely
uncreative imitation of foreign cultural formats, themes, plots, characters, and production in
general - is another significant trend in Philippine television. Following the tremendous global
popularity of modern American programs, especially among middle-class audiences, local
networks have come out with their own versions of Baywatch (Subic Bay), Dawson?s Creek
(Tabing Ilog, meaning riverside), Seventh Heaven (Munting Paraiso, meaning small paradise).
Because local folkways, relatively distant from direct foreign culture influence, predominate
among the most populous underclasses in Philippine society, it is inevitable, however, that
original forms of Filipino folk culture will find expression in local television. For this reason, the
fourth type of programmes - locally-produced programmes with local traditional content, or
content espousing local, traditional values - remains a force in Philippine television. The top-rating
noontime variety show, Magandang Tanghali, Bayan (Good Afternoon, People) is a hodgepodge
of games, a beauty contest, and singing and/or dance performances. In its most popular segment
so far, a prize-winning game called Pera o Bayong (Money or Basket), from about a hundred
prospective urban poor participants, one was chosen after several rounds of successfully
guessing the answers to extremely difficult questions, such as the scientific names of plants and
animals. Being a game of chance rather than skill, the contest was basically a gambling activity.
The last remaining contestant either won a prize in cash or kind amounting to $1,200 to $9,000.
Because the size of the jackpot was equivalent to from a year to seven years of an ordinary
labourer? wage, hundreds of urban poor lined up each day to apply as contestants. The
Globalisation and tradition: Paradoxes in Philippine television and culture 5 of 7
programme provided a vicarious experience for the poor to escape from poverty out of ?sheer
luck? - in other words, by a fatalist or mystical rationale.
One source of the programme?s appeal was the effort of the network to generate comic value by
making the contestants appear as ridiculous as possible, either through their costumes, or their
inability to remember or pronounce the scientific names. In addition, the programme served to
project the image of the advertiser-sponsors and network as economic patron in the pre-modern
mould. In effect, the program exploited the poor as both talent and viewer, their economic
desperation, and the pre-modern society?s dominant poverty.
Hoy Gising is another programme that capitalises on the sheer pre-modern inefficiency and poor
quality of Philippine government services and fosters the pre-modern theme of patronage. It
highlights the poor conditions of public works/utilities, such as dilapidated roads, inadequate
drainage, and uncollected garbage, under the jurisdiction of local officials led by Metro Manila
mayors. Since these conditions are commonplace, the programme conveniently does not run out
of examples to feature each weekday. Planned as a wake-up call for local officials to pay
attention to these specific cases and to public service in general, it ends up heaping praise on
mayors and local officials for addressing these specific complaints, such as doing road repairs. In
the end, the programme is reduced to serving as political public relations image-building and votegetting
vehicles for incumbent mayors. These reactive actions which in the final analysis reflect
negligence in the first place and self-serving attempts to avoid further public embarrassment are
thus depicted as acts of goodwill and generosity instead. In effect, the programme serves to
promote a culture of pre-modern patronage.
Another Philippine trend not copied from American, European or Japanese television is the strong
direct year-to-year linkage between television entertainment and electioneering. This tie-up takes
two basic forms: one, the widespread hosting by incumbent and prospective government officials
of their own regular television shows or program segments as promotional leverage for the
electoral campaign; and two, the entry into electoral politics of a growing number of previously
non-politician celebrities from television as well as film, radio and recording.
Some of the programmes hosted by the incumbent or aspiring politicians are mere entertainmentoriented
?action? or drama programs. Others, including those of the incumbent president, vicepresident,
Senate president - are talk shows which focus on enhancing public image without
substance and promote patronage rather than engaging their audiences in critical political
discourse that question pre-modern state of affairs and traditional politics.
The growing bond between television entertainment and politics enhances rather than diminishes
the merchant quality of Philippine politics - populist or modernise images in exchange for
traditional or elitist realities, and votes and high hopes for change in exchange for low fulfilment of
expectations. It helps thwart rather than support the emergence of a real democratic political
culture and discourse, and a genuine civil society effectively involving a strong and large middle
class in policy making.
Duality of globalisation
Though the four types of programs are based on contrasting societies and cultures, they tend to
complement each other in Philippine television. This is simply because globalisation and premodernity
or tradition in the Philippines likewise complement one another. This complementarity
or symbiosis is basically two-pronged.
First, the largely pre-modern, pre-national state of culture and science which pervades Philippine
television favours the trend of globalisation of Philippine television from importation of
programmes to ownership and control of television stations and production of local programs.
With the larger society remaining chiefly pre-modern, Philippine television programmes remain
basically pre-modern in content, themes and values. Thus they can hardly at all compete in the
largest global television markets - modern economies and viewers who favour modern themes.
Globalisation and tradition: Paradoxes in Philippine television and culture 6 of 7
For that reason, Philippine television producers are marginal players in the arena of globalisation.
Due to the colonial hankering for Caucasian-looking characters, Philippine producers will not be
able to export to other Third World countries productions on the same scale as the Mexican
telenovela. The high and rising cost of foreign technology and currencies bars Filipino television
producers and network owners from competing with the Japanese in anime and helps drive them
to search for strategic foreign partners.
In the final analysis, it is the pre-modern, folk state of Philippine society that favours globalisation
of Philippine media. Yet it is also the pre-modern and folk character of Philippine society and
culture that requires globalisation of Philippine television - the entry of foreign direct investors in
local television - to take the form of programming that it has already begun to take - the symbiosis
of the four types of programmes discussed.
Second, globalisation in the form of the free flow of programmes of the first and second types and
formats and key content inputs in the programs of the third type does not promote modern,
national and democratic culture, and in fact tends to reinforce the long-dominant pre-modern, prenational
and pre-democratic Philippine culture.
Foreign television programs in the Philippines do not promote the scientific norms and values,
and the practice and culture of productivity that are at the core of modern social and cultural
systems. The American channels and programmes which dominate Philippine cable and free
television as well as American and British-produced songs are noted for their largely escapist,
entertainment-oriented content rather than for critical discourse, which raises their awareness of
audiences? social condition and encourages the effective involvement of citizens in what has
been termed the public sphere.
On the other hand, globalise, transnational television with the largest reach in the Philippines -
Mexican telenovelas and Japanese anime - as shown earlier, tends to promote traditional, premodern
rather than modern themes and values. The escapism - and lack of critical discourse - of
globalise television programmes support and complement rather than help reform or modernise
the Philippines? highly skewed, basically pre-modern character of its civil society, marked by the
effective exclusion of the middle class from policy making.
In the Philippines, unless social conditions are radically transformed, the Mexican telenovela
imbued with pre-modern escapist themes and values will most probably remain the benchmark
and leading standard of television drama production. There is no indication that future
globalisation-funded productions in the Philippines will abandon this trend. The search for
maximum ratings and advertising revenues make it logical for television production in the
Philippines, whether foreign or locally owned, to be grounded on pre-modern, traditional escapist
themes and values which blend in with the dominant folk, traditional escapist culture and milieu.
In short, the paradox persists and continues to unfold: in Philippine television, globalisation
originating from modern, and moreover, post-modern digital societies will develop in symbiosis
with a persistent, chiefly pre-modern, pre-national local cultural identity.
Globalisation
आलमपनाह के जिस गीत का आप ज़िक्र कर रहे है उसे ख़ान अथर ने गाया। ख़ान अथर हैदराबाद के बहुत अच्छे गायक है ख़ासकर ग़ज़लें बहुत अच्छी गाते है। इस धारावाहिक के संगीत निर्देशन में भी उनका सहयोग रहा।
दूरदर्शन के फ़रमान धारावाहिक की शूटिंग अधिकतर हैदराबाद में हुई निर्देशक शायद लेख टंडन थे। कँवलजीत और विनीता मलिक के साथ हैदराबाद के नामी सितारे इसमें शामिल थे।
रफ़िया आपा और मंज़रूल साहब हैदराबाद की नामी शक्सियतों में से थे और हैदराबाद में आयोजित ख़ास प्रोग्रामों विशेषकर मुशायरों में ख़ासतौर पर नज़र आते थे।