State of the Pop Address

MANILA, Philippines - Queen of All Media, Kris Aquino; Comedy Concert Queen, Ai-Ai Delas Alas; Superstar Nora Aunor; Megastar, Sharon Cuneta, Star for All Seasons, Vilma Santos; Diamond Star, Maricel Soriano; Pop Princess, Sarah Geronimo; Indie King, Coco Martin; Concert King, Martin Nievera; Mr. Pure Energy, Gary Valenciano; Jologs Cinderella, Angeline Quinto; and to our beloved countrymen; mga ate, koya, at mga mars, isang magandang araw sa inyong lahat.

For the past four years, Supreme has filtered the best and the worst of celebrity culture: from Justin Bieber to Jamich; HBO’s Girls to Daisy Siete; Star Cinema’s Rom-Coms to the French New Wave. Glued to our computer screens, smartphones, and tablets, we’ve brought you this glut of information and changed the cultural landscape as we know it. Chos.

Looking out into this world, though, sends chills down our spines. There’s something very wrong happening with social media, music, film, and TV in this country.

Social Media

The Internet, this generation’s defining medium, is a haven for porn. It is also a vast playground for 14-year old girls, holed up in their rooms, lipsynching to K-pop. Your lola, by the way, probably has her own “Call Me Maybe” video, too.

DOTA-playing tambays in rental shops beside Angel’s Burger stands have joined ranks with a population that subscribes to word arts, reblog me’s, and memes. The result is a dumbing-down of taste.

Case in point: Jamich (the portmanteau of Jamvhille and Michelle, tween hearts extraordinaire) have a series of shoddy, homemade videos that aim to share their ideals of love in relationship. Their 15-minute opus, By Chance, (think of it as the jejemon’s Un Chien Andalou) has gained more than five million views. These kids, no matter how many fans they have, are no Jolina and Marvin, or Juday and Wowie.

Users can now generate their own content (no matter how horrible they are), and Kimpoy Feliciano is Alain de Botton and Paolo Coehlo to his teenage fanclub. For today’s youth, 140-character word vomits translate to waves of wisdom eagerly digested by the lonely, the lovestruck, and the bored.

‘Original’ Pilipino Music

Now, look at the music industry. Kids and file-sharing have bulldozed the big, bad recording companies but somehow we allow MYX to live on — a wastebasket of autotune, K-pop, dubstep, bossacoustic, and fifth-generation pop covers.

What you heard in the ’80s is probably pulsing through the airwaves with a different singer. Martin Nievera and Gary V. are still singing the same songs for the same crowd. These, by the way, are the same people who are championing Original Pilipino Music, but where is the O in OPM? Local singers cry foul when foreign artists outsell their concerts but even Lady Gaga’s repurposed ’80s hairography has more glimmer of inventiveness than Party Pilipinas and ASAP combined. Filipino artists’ discographies are repackaged hits that live on through low-end radio stations whose taglines are drilled to the back of your skull within 10 minutes of commute in a taxi cab.

Indie Artists

But there are glimmers of hope.

An alternative music industry has been gaining ground for the past few years, aided by iTunes Philippines, Bandcamp, Soundcloud, and, ironically, even Facebook and Youtube. As technology expands, bands are creating their own music without the pressures of marketability. With no record label honchos hovering over their backs, these independent artists are free to create, experiment, and do whatever the f*ck they want, leading to an improvement in musicality.

The independent scene is expanding with artists helping each other through local crowdfunding avenue, Artisteconnect. Through this, we are no longer confined to novelty songs and pop hooks: we now have chillwave, trip-hop, post-rock, garage, indie-pop, and math rock — genres that only existed within hipster aggregators such as Pitchfork, HypeMachine, and Stereogum. Local artists like Outerhope, Wilderness, and Tarsius are also flying off to different locales and leaving their marks on the global music arena as opposed to Christian Bautista and Charice being the sole torchbearer of regional and worldwide Pinoy music ambassadors.

Pinoys can do more than birit renditions of Top 40 Whitney Houston staples. And as for Jessica Sanchez? She doesn’t even go here.

Pinoy Film

It’s the same for film. Studios are still churning out idiotic crap fueled by their narrow-minded view of what they think the masses will enjoy “after a hard day’s work.” But let’s not forget: This is a nation that once flocked to an MMFF that featured Kisapmata, Himala, and Halimaw sa Banga — arguably one of the best Filipino horror films of all time. Thankfully, Pinoy cinema’s “new wave” has no signs of stopping.

Although it begins as a watermark of the horror genre, Yam Laranas’s The Road left harrowing impressions on foreign film critics, making the Philippines a new factory for quality Asian films. Festival films are still making rounds. Even Ang Babae sa Septic Tank’s satirical take on independent filmmaking landed a feature spot at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Yes, Eugene Domingo’s TV Patrol acting echoed through the hallowed walls of the MoMA that has been the home of art heavyweights such as Andy Warhol, Banksy, and Frida Kahlo’s eyebrows.

Hierarchy Of Needs

So let’s not despair. Perhaps the Philippines really is indeed the home-schooled jungle freak kid of Asia. And so what if it’s still true that celebrity culture occupies the top echelon of Pinoys’ hierarchy of needs? It isn’t necessarily a bad thing to keep the masses a clamoring horde of consumers — that is, as long as quality and relevance still remain at the top of the food chain. At least it’s the culture of resourcefulness that pushes Filipinos through. As long as alternatives exist, whether it’s in music, food, fashion, or film, there’s more to life than what’s sitting in front of us; an acceptance of our cultural pockmarks and embracing them in creed-like passion: with arms wide open.

In the words of great Pinoy pop culture philosopher Jolina Magdangal in Laging Tapat, “Magkulang man magkaminsan, talagang kasama yan sa ating buhay”.

This is what democracy is like.

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