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8. Niche Globality: Philippine Media Texts to the World
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150 Rolando B. Tolentino 150 CHAPTER 8 Niche Globality: Philippine Media Texts to the World Rolando B. Tolentino Media — film, television, music, and the internet — are transnational artifacts and sites of transnational negotiations. The introduction of cinema to the Philippines, for instance, from France and the U.S., marked a process of acculturation and adaptation of foreign technology in the new frontier, even as Bienvenido Lumbera has noted that “the beginnings of the industry arose, not from a local felt need, but from the initiative of foreign businessmen” (1992). This included, at least in the Philippines, an importation of the studio and star systems in production and reception. Philippine cinema during the Marcos period (1965–86) emphasized gritty social realism as a modality of engagement with the dictatorship and developed economies’ vote of confidence of the regime that ensured local skills for foreign businesses. Films produced during the height of the Marcos period highlighted the conditions of humanity amidst massive poverty and political repression that became the vernacular to understand Philippine-ness in the international art market. To this day, only this type of national film is allowed to engage with the festival circuit. For the most part, like other countries that were receptive to global media texts, the Philippines has played the role of an active discerning receptacle to Hollywood and Hong Kong martial arts films, the waves of telenovelas (Latin American, Japanese, Taiwanese, and Korean), J- and K-pop music for a sub-cultural youth market, and also with anime, pirated DVDs, and Latin American protest music. Newer global texts are undertaking to shift the middle-class fantasy of Filipinos — from a wholly U.S.-generated and dominated cultural landscape to a global geoscape . The U.S. influence has endured. The U.S. colonized the country Philippine Media Texts to the World 151 since 1898 up to 1942, and has directed its political and economic development in the post-war period. As a matter of fact, since the 1920s, the development of the Philippine media followed the American model, “competitive, profit-oriented, business units catering to a mass market of consumers” (Coronel 1998). Marcos’s declaration of martial law in 1972 took hold of media and put them under the control of the Philippine state. Little private involvement in media occurred at the hands of Marcos’s bureaucrats. With the assassination of opposition leader Benigno Aquino Jr. in 1983, the “alternative media,” as it was known, helped stirred the critical mass that challenged and eventually toppled Marcos in 1986. Thereafter, most of the media was sequestered by the Aquino government , and then were either sold to private corporations or returned to the previous owners. The transfer of ownership of ABS-CBN, which would turn out to be the largest media conglomerate, shifted the consumption trend of media. ABS-CBN became the market leader in television, and was transformed into the crown jewel of the Lopez family empire, which was also involved in the water, gas, highway, electricity, and investment businesses. ABS-CBN was able to shift the taste and media preferences of audiences in two ways. First, it acquired the rudiments of infotainment that other networks reproduced in their own programming. Basically “what was passed off as news and public affairs programs are glitzy, fastpaced accounts of such wonders as a man who cracks coconuts with his teeth, dwarves who walk on water, or politicians who dance the tango” (Coronel 1998). With the telecommunications industry liberalized in 1992, most media corporations became affiliated with global businesses to co-finance their expansion ventures. The Lopezes also went into the telephone, cable, and cellphone businesses, among other co-ventures during the time and with the consolidation of failing corporations into bigger and more stable business thereafter, helped break the powerful PLDT monopoly orchestrated during the Marcos period. The global co-venturing paved the way for the second shift in media preferences. It consolidated Filipino-language programming in the free channels, and gave rise to the birthing of cable television. Englishlanguage shows were relegated from primetime programming in the free channels to those in the UHF (ultra high frequency) channels. The Lopez empire would later jumpstart the UHF programming, and dominate the cable TV industry. They would also pioneer the export of Philippine cable television to countries with a sizeable Filipino population. Through [3.88.16.192] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 23:55 GMT) 152 Rolando B. Tolentino The Filipino Channel, ABS-CBN television shows...