By Manuel G. Chaves, Gilda Cordero-Fernando
TO BE sure, most Pinoy things are derivatives of imported stuff (from clothes to food to music). Why then do some capture the market and some don’t? After all, weren’t they copying the same thing? Is it because the fall-outs were not Western enough? Or, if one were to reexamine the premises, not Pinoy enough?
How did Charice Pempengco conquer YouTube, Ellen Degeneres, Celine Dion, Madison Square Garden and finally Oprah? Because, whether singing English or Filipino, she sounded Pinoy. The revenge of the birit! Just as Pinoy-sounding are the forever-lasting Martin Nievera and Regine, Sarah Geronimo and all the stars of the jukebox firmament. Time to accept that under all that cotton snow it’s still the Pinoy element that resonates.
Because we’ve been colonized, the balance is delicate, sometimes hit quite by accident. From competing with multinational giants Pinoys have learned a lot. Jollibee didn’t try to be American and won the burger wars. It’s not the hamburger that the Pinoy was rebelling against, it was the “flat American taste.” So Jollibee Filipinized the hamburger.
And don’t forget our beloved Dionesia who has never been anything but pure Pinoy!
Talk about Pinoys changing the colonized equation! Apl.de.ap, the Pinoy member of the Black Eyed Peas, contributed the song “Bebot” to their repertoire with the following lyrics: “Pinoy ka, sigaw na! Kung maganda ka, sigaw na! Kung buhay mo ay mahalaga, sige!”
As for dancers, what about those prisoners in Cebu dancing their hearts out to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” on YouTube? What about the Pinoy dancers in Disneyland, Hong Kong, who are a hit because they do a todo performance, all the time, compared to Chinese dancers who move like automatons. Besting people in their own land!
Where does one look?
What makes defining the Filipino so difficult? First of all, where does one look? We have no consciousness of the preciousness of our past. There is no such thing as an everyday practice of culture, of preserving our old structures and of loving our own.
How does one, for instance, promote a bahay-kubo-inspired house to clients when we have no knowledge or support for building this native icon? There’s not enough bamboo today to harvest, not enough technology to preserve it, plus the carpenters have forgotten how to handle bamboo! Result: It’s more expensive to make a bahay-kubo than a concrete house.
Not only do we have to struggle to promote our roots, we have to dig for them! In the ’30s, Pinoy culture wasn’t so elusive, you could still define it. There were anahaw leaf and santan flower decorations at Luneta Grandstand and Malacañang. People took to Filipino folk songs arranged for ballroom dancing just as readily as to the foxtrot. No one equated local with baduy. For culture vultures there were the Metropolitan Theater and the original Manila Grand Opera House.
Could it be because there were people in power who believed in things Pinoy? Manuel L. Quezon advocated NEPA, all things native. During the Japanese time, when everything American was banned, being Filipino was deeply appreciated because we were forced to make the things we used. The bakya became the art piece of the carver. (Some pieces are on exhibit at Yuchengco Museum). We created stage shows so popular that people queued up for every showing. After Liberation we reverted to the old stateside mentality.
One may criticize Imelda Marcos for skewed priorities but not for her artistic vision for the Filipino. She wore the saya beautifully and promoted it. She supported prodigies who ended up international caliber. She established the OPM awards, the National Artist Awards, and of course, the Cultural Center of the Philippines.
But somehow we lost it. People who could make a difference got stuck in proving the Pinoy was “just as good as the puti.” The foreign framework is, as ever, the criterion for Filipino excellence.
And the framework has been there for ages. Even the accolades for our patriot painter Juan Luna were for being “just as good as the Spaniard.” In counter-stream, Botong Francisco learned the rudiments of the Western medium, painted like a Pinoy, and was lauded for being Pinoy.
The other framework that Filipinos have long begun to accept is that a country can succeed only if it is technologically advanced. According to whom? Will the Philippines really fade away if we didn’t have the latest computer? Globalization is the ultimate form of cultural imperialism.
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