Globalisation and tradition: Paradoxes in Philippine television and culture

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.

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∑

∑ 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.

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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

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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.

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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