ANH TOPICS midterms

SPECIAL FACTORS OF RECEPTIVITY 1

Giant Inferiority Complex 1

Eminently Receptive Social Structure of Custom 1

Onslaught of American entertainment forms came into a vacuum. 1

structures of mass communication. 1

• Stage entertainment • Radio • Films • Comics • Magazines • Popular music in

2
the Philippines.
Conclusion 3

1. Sports 2. Television 3. Leisure activities 4. Entertainment 5. Print Media 6.

4
Pop music

PHILIPPINE – AMERICAN CULTURAL INTERACTION

PHILIPPINE POPULAR CULTURE ( 1st PPT)

SPECIAL FACTORS OF RECEPTIVITY

First, Giant Inferiority Complex

Second, the Eminently Receptive Social Structure of Custom

Third, Onslaught of American entertainment forms came into a vacuum.

Fourthly, Structures of mass communication.

1. GIANT INFERIORITY COMPLEX

Predisposes the colonial or the former colonial and generations following to

consider the conqueror’s culture superior to his own.

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 2. EMINENT RECEPTIVE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF CUSTOM

Before he became aware of Filipino literature, song, dance, and history, the Filipino
was made aware of American history, heroes, life, and culture.

Through an education system that cunningly used not only American subject matter
but the culture-loaded English language as its medium.

3. THE ONSLAUGHT OF AMERICAN ENTERTAINMENT FORMS CAME INTO

VACUUM

Spanish colonization had kept the Philippines regional in character, unified only by
Spanish administration, and without an entrenched national popular culture.

The various folk cultures were so different from the popular forms that came in with
the American life and culture.

That there was no real competition that pop music, radio and film practically had the
field to themselves,  without having to fight the “kundiman” or ‘zarzuela’.

4. STRUCTURES OF MASS COMMUNICATION

All came to the Filipinos from the U.S almost all were of initial American ownership
and all were purveyed as samples of their bag of goods American-made goodies:

US films, radio serials, songs, and an underlying lifestyle;

All for copying, adapting, and assimilating by Filipinos who wanted to be “modern”
and “with it”.

PHILIPPINE POPULAR CULTURE

As a Philippine Contemporary popular culture took shape, the shape it took was
clearly American.

Philippine Popular Culture is therefore: (a) heavily American in that it has

absorbed American Popular Culture as its own (b) even when consciously

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 Filipino in subject matter, form, and traditional roots it is still heavily influenced by
American Popular Culture.

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PHILIPPINE-AMERICAN CULTURAL INTERACTION

Stage entertainment

Radio

Films

Comics

Magazines

Popular music in the Philippines.

1. Stage entertainment
Earliest entertainment medium to establish a foothold in
Philippine life.

American Vaudeville

What is Vaudeville?

a. Vaudeville is a farce with music. In the United States, the term connotes a light
entertainment popular from the mid-1890ss until the early 1930s which consisted of
10 to 15 individual unrelated acts, featuring magicians, acrobats comedians ,
trained animals, jugglers, singers, and dancers.

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 b. Vaudeville came in officially with an American takeover, most probably as a means
of entertainment for the troops.

c. Vaudeville had become a strong competitor to the zarzuela and had produced
Philippine performers (Dimples, Toytoy, Hanasan) who were household names.

d. In the 1930s it created stars still known at the present time who were local versions
of American models.

e. Quite obviously its very marketable product was American entertainment: songs,
dances, and style.

f. Less obviously, the product was an attitude that this was the only form of
entertainment worthy of the urban audiences.

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 g. For many years after, into the 1960s there were unending contests for the Perry
Como, Jon James, Johnny Mathis, Elvis Presley, and Frank Sinatra of the
Philippines.

h. Who copied not only every song but every inflection and the total style of the model.

2. Radio
Radio came in 1922 and its only product at the beginning was music, quite probably
American.

In the thirties, when radio was so well established that its personalities were given
as much newspaper coverage as movie stars, consisted mainly of music programs
and few newscasts all in English.

It was then that the standard for radio announcers came to be established:

A good voice and an accent as close to American as possible. This is a standard

that continues to the present.

The music is of course American popular music.

With the emergence of Pinoy Rock in 1973, this has claimed some “airtime”, aided
by the Broadcast Media Council order (1977) that each radio station must play at
least three Filipina o
song every hour.

a. Radio in the Japanese occupation

Only one radio station was allowed to function “KZRH”.

Short wave radio were forbidden.

People caught listening to short wave radios will be heavily punished.

But people during that time risked their lives just to listen to Juan De la Cruz,

b. Post-war radio/programming

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 Post-war programming continued with music and news but came to be heavy with
canned US serials until the development of Filipino soap operas.

At present, there are no soap operas in English. The soap operas are only in
Filipino but the deejays, the music, the news all broadcast a strong pervasive
American presence that now
reaches even the rural areas via transistor radio.

Philippine-American Cultural Interaction

(TELEVISION AND FILM)

3. Television
a. The first television station, DZAQ TV (Channel 3 in Manila) opened just before the
1953 Presidential Election, and its first task was election coverage.

b. Television were too expensive for almost anyone except for the upper class.

c. Production of local shows was expensive and lacked trained personnel.

d. However, in 1972 there were seven TV Channels in Manila.

e. Most of them are dependent on canned US shows.

f. Only one-hour live broadcast in the whole eight-hour broadcast day.

The of hours housed U.S. informational features and, and at prime time, such
shows as:

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 Bonanza, Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Ed Sullivan Show, Ben Case, The
Untouchables, Star Trek

among others made the Philippine TV timetable read like barely retouched US
schedule

g. When live local show developed, it was based, predictably, on US show as models.

h. Budgetary reasons made most American-type series impossible.

i. So, the predominant types were those not needing large or extended production
plans:

musical variety shows, situation comedies, a few drama serials, quiz shows,
interview or talk shows, children’s program (mostly games that has learning
activities) a few instructional programs (cooking, crafts, etc.), a few musical
specials, and news and news commentary – ALL ON THE AMERICAN PLAN.

j. Major policy behind television was just adopted from the U.S. without any
deliberation.

k. Government-supported and supervised television like that of the BBC was not
considered; nor was the socio-economic context in which television was going to
exist.

l. Philippine television has been from the beginning like that of the US, commercial,
and it broadcasts, along with its news and entertainment, a consumerist philosophy
and values that are out of place in a THIRD WORLD DEVELOPING COUNTRY
with a national budget barely able to manage the essentials of survival.

4. Film
a. The first two feature film made in Manila were both on the life of Dr. Jose Rizal, and
both were made by the Americans in 1909.

b. When Philippine movie was born, it developed from the traditional stage, especially
from the zarzuela and the prose drama.

c. Analysts and critics and the movie industry itself feel that the principal problem of
the Filipino film is not the lack of government support, nor the difficulty of melding a
traditional sensibility with the character and technology of the medium;

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 But the competition from foreign films, which dominate the market.

d. Local movie producers claim that the Board of Censors are not as strict with foreign
films as they are with local films and that the imports are not heavily taxed.

e. Of all Philippine businesses, the film industry was the only one in 1934 that paid as
much as 28 percent of its gross earnings to the government in taxes.

f. Foreign films (mostly American) definitely dominate the market.

g. In 1963 for example 568 foreign movies were shown, no exact figures for that year
are available for locally-made films.

h. But in the late 1940’s and early 50’s approximately 60 Filipino Pictures were made
yearly, about 80 Filipino movies were made in 1957 and an average of 120 movies
are being made at present.

i. Even more difficult for the Filipino producer was the fact that the only theaters
available to them until the 1960’s were the second and third class theaters in the
congested downtown areas.

j. The first-run and first-class movie houses showed only imported movies mostly
American.

k. In 1966 the Mayor of Manila (Antonio J. Villegas) instituted the Manila Film Festival
in which all theaters of had to show only Filipino films for at least 10 days.

5. Popular Music
a. American pop music has been shown to have arrived with the first entertainment
medium introduced, vaudeville.

b. It has had eight decades to establish itself as a genuine part of local popular culture.

c. At least four generations of Filipinos have been completely conversant with the
American Popular Music in their times, including the fox trot, Glenn Miller,
Broadway, the twist, current
pop, folk, and rock.

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 d. It is American song, not the kundiman that they sing in the shower, at parties, at
programs, to loved ones, at amateur shows, as professional performers on radio,
television or in the movies.

e. It is American song that has provided the catch phrases, the allusions, the memory
lanes of these four generations not the Filipino song.

f. In 1973, Joey Smith and the Juan De la Cruz band first sang about “our music” in
Filipino it was hailed as a breakthrough and dubbed Pinoy Rock, but the music was
heavy Western rock.

g. “The Manila Sound” Slowed-down rock more melodious, but still American in
structure.

h. Today critics and musicologists rejoice in the proliferation of composers and

performers breaking into the airlines with Filipino song, but they admit that the
rhythm and style of the music is definitely and strictly Western.

CONCLUSION
PHILIPPINE-AMERICAN CULTURAL INTERACTION

This inquiry into the Philippine-American interaction in popular culture, shows that
the very beginnings of mass media in the Philippines worked towards the
establishment of strong American base in local pop culture.

It is not only that American films, canned TV programs, music, comics, and popular
literature are so well entrenched in Philippine life today; but also that Philippine

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 Films, TV programs, music, komiks and Philippine literature are so patiently built on
the American plan.

This interaction is an active, ongoing, multimedia, multisensory bombardment. It is

not merely the encounter between a strong presence and one weakened by colonial
mentality.

It is quite simply CULTURAL IMPERIALISM.

It occurs when one nation creates in another needs and desires that are not its own
and which are only partially comprehended.

It occurs when the receiving nation accepts and adopts and adapts in something of
a daze, at the beginning of the relationship and again in the later, policy-forming
stage with too few questions, and too little analysis or self-knowledge.

Cultural imperialism occurs when the donor culture causes the receiving culture to
create images of the world adapted from the donor culture not from the bottom, from
felt need, from productive activity, from social relations, but from uncritical and
unquestioning absorption of another culture.

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