THE ILLUSION OF STATUS: DOÑA VICTORINA, COLONIAL MENTALITY, AND THE FILIPINO SOCIAL CLIMBER
The desire to rise socially is not inherently wrong. Every society contains people who want better education, greater prosperity, more influence, or a more secure future for themselves and their families. Social mobility can be a sign of a healthy society, especially when advancement comes through education, enterprise, professional achievement, or public service.
But José Rizal understood that there is a profound difference between rising in life and becoming obsessed with appearing to have risen.
Few characters embody that distinction more vividly than Doña Victorina de los Reyes de Espadaña in Noli Me Tángere. She is one of Rizal’s most memorable comic creations, but her comedy conceals a serious political criticism. Victorina is not merely an arrogant woman with extravagant tastes. She is a product of a colonial society that has taught people to associate Spanish identity, European appearance, and proximity to colonial authority with superiority.
Her tragedy—and her absurdity—is that she accepts this hierarchy so completely that she turns against her own identity.
Through Doña Victorina, Rizal exposes one of the deepest psychological consequences of colonialism: the colonized person may eventually learn to despise what belongs to himself or herself and imitate the identity of the colonizer in search of dignity.
This makes Victorina more than a nineteenth-century caricature. She represents a pattern that can survive long after political colonialism has ended. Her exaggerated European clothes, artificial appearance, affected speech, obsession with titles, and contempt for Filipino identity are early literary expressions of what would later be described as colonial mentality.
The social climber, in this Philippine context, is therefore not simply someone who wants money.
The deeper problem is someone who has learned to believe that worth comes from being associated with the powerful, wealthy, foreign, or socially prestigious.
RIZAL’S COLONIAL HIERARCHY
To understand Doña Victorina, it is necessary to understand the society Rizal was criticizing.
Noli Me Tángere was written in the context of Spanish colonial rule, where social distinctions were deeply intertwined with race, ancestry, political authority, religion, wealth, and proximity to the colonial establishment. Spanish identity carried enormous prestige, while native Filipinos were placed in an inferior position within the colonial hierarchy.
This environment created an incentive for imitation.
If Spanish culture was treated as superior, then speaking Spanish could become a status symbol. If European clothing represented refinement, then European dress could become a social costume. If association with Spanish officials conferred prestige, then marriage or friendship with them could become a pathway to status.
Rizal understood the absurdity of this system.
Doña Victorina desperately wants to be perceived as Spanish even though her identity is unmistakably Filipino. Her behavior becomes increasingly theatrical because the identity she desires cannot simply be acquired. She must constantly perform it.
This is the essence of her comedy.
The more she attempts to demonstrate superiority, the more she reveals her insecurity.
Rizal’s satire therefore operates on two levels. He makes Victorina ridiculous, but he also makes the colonial system that produced her ridiculous.
DOÑA VICTORINA AND THE INTERNALIZATION OF INFERIORITY
Victorina’s most important characteristic is not her vanity but her rejection of herself.
She does not merely admire Spanish culture. She treats Filipino identity as something embarrassing.
That distinction is fundamental.
Admiring another culture is normal. Learning another language is valuable. Wearing foreign clothing, eating foreign food, studying abroad, or appreciating foreign institutions is not automatically evidence of colonial mentality.
The problem emerges when admiration becomes self-contempt.
Victorina’s desire to become European is ultimately a declaration that she does not believe being Filipino is good enough.
This is why Rizal’s character remains so powerful. Colonialism does not always need to force people to abandon their identity physically. It can produce a hierarchy of values in which people voluntarily distance themselves from their own culture because they have learned that another identity receives greater respect.
The colonizer’s greatest victory, in this sense, can occur when the colonized person begins to police himself.
Victorina does not need Spanish authorities constantly telling her that Spanish is superior. She has already internalized the lesson.
THE PERFORMANCE OF STATUS
Victorina’s clothing and behavior demonstrate another important feature of social climbing: status must be performed.
People who possess established social legitimacy rarely need to announce it constantly. Those whose status is uncertain often become intensely concerned with its visible symbols.
Victorina’s imported clothes, cosmetics, manners, speech, marriage, and title therefore become props in a permanent performance.
Her famous appearance is deliberately excessive. Rizal makes her almost theatrical because he wants readers to see the distance between genuine identity and artificial status.
She is trying to convince everyone around her that she belongs to a world that does not truly accept her.
This is the central paradox of the social climber.
The person may successfully impress some observers, but the constant need to demonstrate status reveals how insecure the status actually is.
THE FILIPINO VERSION OF THE SOCIAL CLIMBER
Although Victorina belongs to the nineteenth century, the underlying phenomenon is not confined to Spanish colonial society.
The Philippines has experienced successive periods of foreign influence and has developed a complicated relationship with imported culture, particularly from Spain and later the United States. English proficiency, foreign education, Western consumer brands, overseas employment, and international lifestyles can all carry legitimate economic value. But they can also become symbols of prestige independent of their practical value.
This is where Rizal’s critique remains relevant.
There is a difference between learning English because it provides access to global knowledge and believing that speaking English makes a Filipino inherently more sophisticated.
There is a difference between buying an imported product because it is better suited to one’s needs and buying it primarily because it signals social position.
There is a difference between studying abroad to acquire knowledge and treating foreign credentials as proof that local education is automatically inferior.
There is a difference between working overseas as an economic opportunity and believing that success abroad makes a person more valuable than someone who remains in the Philippines.
Rizal’s question is ultimately not whether Filipinos should appreciate foreign cultures.
It is whether Filipinos can appreciate the foreign without becoming ashamed of themselves.
THE COLONIAL MINDSET AND CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION
The social climber’s dependence on symbols also connects Rizal’s nineteenth-century satire to contemporary consumer culture.
Modern status can be displayed through cars, smartphones, clothing, restaurants, subdivisions, schools, vacations, professional titles, social-media photographs, and exclusive memberships.
None of these things is inherently bad.
The problem arises when consumption becomes a substitute for achievement.
A person may purchase something not because it provides genuine utility but because it communicates, “I belong to a higher class.”
This is remarkably similar to Victorina’s logic.
The object becomes a social language.
The expensive dress says something. The foreign accent says something. The prestigious school says something. The address says something. The title says something.
The danger is that people eventually begin to confuse the symbol of success with success itself.
Rizal understood this mechanism long before modern advertising and social media made status performance almost continuous.
MATHILDE LOISEL: THE SOCIAL CLIMBER WITHOUT COLONIALISM
Guy de Maupassant’s Mathilde Loisel in The Necklace provides a useful comparison because her circumstances are different.
Mathilde is not attempting to become Spanish or imitate a colonizer. Her dissatisfaction comes primarily from class aspiration. She believes that she was meant for luxury but has been trapped in a modest household.
Her obsession becomes especially visible when she receives an invitation to an elegant event. She cannot simply attend. She needs the appearance of wealth.
The necklace becomes her social costume.
For one night, she experiences the admiration she believes she deserves.
But the necklace is borrowed.
The irony is devastating. She sacrifices years of her life because she wants others to believe that she possesses something she does not actually own.
The story therefore parallels Rizal’s critique while lacking its colonial dimension.
Mathilde wants to appear wealthy.
Victorina wants to appear European.
Both demonstrate the same psychological mechanism: external recognition becomes more important than internal security.
But Victorina’s story is more historically political because the identity she seeks is not merely that of a richer person. It is the identity of the colonizer.
PIP: WHEN SOCIAL MOBILITY BECOMES SELF-ALIENATION
Charles Dickens’s Pip in Great Expectations offers another useful comparison.
Pip’s desire to become a gentleman begins partly with humiliation. After encountering a world of wealth and refinement, he becomes ashamed of his humble background.
His problem is not ambition itself. Education and advancement are positive things.
His mistake is believing that becoming socially superior requires distancing himself from people such as Joe Gargery, whose loyalty and goodness have little relationship to wealth.
Pip eventually learns that social position does not determine moral worth.
This lesson closely parallels Rizal’s critique.
A society that teaches people to measure human value according to race, wealth, title, or education encourages people to become ashamed of their origins.
The colonial version of this hierarchy says:
Spanish is superior to Filipino.
The class version says:
Rich is superior to poor.
The modern consumer version says:
Expensive is superior to ordinary.
The underlying mistake is the same: confusing social position with human worth.
BECKY SHARP AND THE PHILIPPINE HIERARCHY
Becky Sharp in William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair adds another dimension.
Becky understands that society is a performance. She knows that people care about money, marriage, connections, manners, and appearances, and she deliberately manipulates those mechanisms to improve her position.
Her story demonstrates that social climbing can become rational behavior in an unequal society.
This is important for understanding Rizal as well.
It would be too easy to dismiss Doña Victorina simply as a foolish individual.
People respond to incentives.
If a society rewards association with power, individuals will seek association with power. If foreign credentials command greater prestige, people will pursue foreign credentials. If certain surnames, schools, neighborhoods, professions, or social circles confer status, people will try to enter them.
The individual may be vain, but the social structure also matters.
Rizal’s brilliance lies partly in showing that personal absurdity can be produced by institutional inequality.
FROM COLONIAL SUBJECT TO MODERN FILIPINO
The Philippines eventually became an independent republic, but independence does not automatically erase inherited hierarchies of value.
Political sovereignty and psychological independence are different achievements.
A nation can control its government while still believing that foreign products are inherently superior.
It can have universities while assuming that the best education must come from abroad.
It can produce artists while treating foreign recognition as the ultimate validation.
It can have talented entrepreneurs while believing that a foreign company is automatically more prestigious than a Filipino one.
It can have a rich cultural heritage while continually asking whether its culture is “world-class” according to external standards.
This does not mean that Filipinos should reject the world.
Quite the opposite.
A confident society should be able to learn from everyone.
The objective should not be isolation but equal participation.
The Philippines should be able to admire Japan without wanting to become Japanese, learn from the United States without treating American identity as inherently superior, appreciate European culture without considering Filipino culture inferior, and compete globally without believing that foreign approval is the final measure of national worth.
That is a very different attitude from Doña Victorina’s.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ASPIRATION AND SOCIAL CLIMBING
This distinction is essential.
Filipinos should aspire.
They should want better schools, better hospitals, better infrastructure, higher incomes, stronger institutions, more competitive companies, internationally recognized universities, advanced industries, and greater opportunities.
There is nothing colonial about wanting excellence.
Indeed, refusing to accept mediocrity can be an expression of national self-respect.
The problem begins when the aspiration is primarily symbolic.
A society should want better institutions, not merely more impressive appearances.
It should want productive industries, not merely imported luxury goods.
It should want excellent universities, not merely prestigious diplomas.
It should want competitive Filipino companies, not merely foreign brands.
It should want competent public officials, not merely powerful surnames.
It should want international respect based on achievement, not recognition obtained through proximity to foreign power.
This is perhaps the most important lesson that can be extracted from Rizal’s satire.
The answer to colonial mentality is not anti-foreign sentiment.
It is self-respect grounded in substance.
RIZAL’S WARNING FOR A DEVELOPING REPUBLIC
The Philippines remains a society where social mobility matters enormously. Millions of families aspire to move from poverty or economic insecurity into the middle class and beyond. Education, professional advancement, entrepreneurship, migration, and overseas employment have transformed countless lives.
These aspirations should not be mocked.
The danger is when social advancement becomes a race for appearances rather than an expansion of genuine capability.
A family that becomes prosperous should not need to prove that it has escaped its origins by looking down on poorer Filipinos.
A graduate of an elite school should not need to demonstrate superiority over graduates of ordinary institutions.
A successful overseas worker should not be treated as inherently more valuable than someone who builds a career at home.
A wealthy person should not automatically be assumed to be more intelligent or morally superior.
And a Filipino who speaks with an American or British accent should not automatically be regarded as more educated than a Filipino who speaks excellent Filipino.
These distinctions may appear obvious, yet societies reproduce them constantly.
That is precisely why Rizal’s satire remains uncomfortable.
Doña Victorina is funny because she is exaggerated.
She is unsettling because she is recognizable.
THE NECKLACE AND THE MIRROR
Mathilde Loisel’s necklace provides a powerful metaphor for this entire problem.
The necklace appears valuable because everyone assumes that it is valuable.
The same can happen with social status.
A title may have little substance behind it.
A luxury object may provide little practical value.
A prestigious association may conceal incompetence.
A foreign credential may not guarantee wisdom.
A wealthy appearance may conceal debt.
A carefully curated public image may conceal private insecurity.
The social climber lives according to perceived value.
Rizal asks us to look behind the costume.
Who is the person when the European dress is removed?
Who is the person when the title disappears?
Who is the person when the expensive car is gone?
Who is the person when nobody is watching?
These questions expose the difference between status and character.
CONCLUSION: RISING WITHOUT REJECTING WHO WE ARE
Doña Victorina remains one of Philippine literature’s great characters because she represents something larger than personal vanity. She represents a society in which colonial power has transformed cultural identity into a hierarchy.
Her tragedy is not simply that she wants to be Spanish.
It is that she believes being Filipino is something from which she must escape.
Rizal’s satire therefore contains a deeper lesson for the Philippine Republic.
Filipinos should not be afraid of ambition. They should not apologize for wanting prosperity, excellence, international competitiveness, or global recognition. A poor society must aspire to become richer; a developing nation must seek greater capabilities; an emerging economy must learn from the best in the world.
But advancement should not require self-rejection.
The Philippines does not need to become another country to become successful. Filipinos do not need foreign identities to become sophisticated. Filipino institutions do not need foreign names to become excellent. Filipino achievements do not become meaningful only after they receive foreign approval.
The goal should be to rise without pretending to be someone else.
That is the fundamental difference between genuine social mobility and social climbing.
Social mobility changes one’s circumstances.
Social climbing changes one’s performance.
One builds.
The other imitates.
One can strengthen identity.
The other can destroy it.
More than a century after Rizal created Doña Victorina, the challenge remains remarkably relevant: Can Filipinos enter the modern world without believing that modernity requires abandoning themselves?
The answer should be yes.
The Philippines can become richer without becoming ashamed of being Filipino. It can become globally competitive without becoming culturally dependent. It can learn from powerful countries without worshipping them. It can embrace foreign ideas without surrendering its own judgment.
And individuals can rise from poverty to prosperity, from obscurity to prominence, and from local beginnings to international achievement without looking backward with shame.
Rizal’s enduring lesson is therefore not that Filipinos should refuse to climb.
It is that we should climb without losing ourselves along the way.
I recall someone saying that a lot of Fil-Am doctors who come to the Philippines have a superiority complex. It could be superiority without the complex. The complex may be in those who feel inferior.
I think that was me. You have a point.
Thanks for this important article, Karl. There are two aspects to this:
1) the community aspect of Philippine culture which does not like people who try to “leave the barangay”. It does like people who take the barangay with them when they succeed, for instance by sponsoring relatives to also migrate, or by financing the studies of relatives to also succeed. Of course the latter can have the relative just spending money at the mall.
2. Of course there is the suspicion towards those who “leave the barangay” and want to “enter Intramuros” which is what Dona Victorina does not fully succeed at, but her niece Paulita Gomez does at the end of the Fili.
Extremes are the famous story of the Filipina beauty contestant in the 1960s who said “I speak Tagalog only to the maids” versus the Dutertes making a big show of eating at the carinderia to prove that they are “makamasa”.
Are the only beings that are capable of reaching the highest heights yet staying grounded.. manananggals? Iyan ang tanong..
P.S. https://x.com/screenrant/status/2113677085088641059 Lea Salonga’s first kontrabida voice role was now in Forgotten Island, as the manananggal..
Thanks again.
“Are the only beings that are capable of reaching the highest heights yet staying grounded.. manananggals? Iyan ang tanong..” – Irineo
Good question.
Astral travellers and those buried dix feet under who went to heaven. Going back to our complex, yes you have a point . Look for Joe’s article about the Military Industrial Simplex. It is more simpler and no need to beware of a complex.
really, cv! were you still here in philippines when the filipino beauty who said, I speak tagalog only to the maids, won the contest and become miss u in 1969? gloria diaz, she was big news in united states at the time and nearly floored the 1st man on the moon, neil armstrong, with her giant step for filipino womanhood.
😂🤣😂🏆
I was disappointed that the forum did not take up the topic of manananggals. Irineo’s question could be read as asking whether Filipinos who reach the greatest heights are still capable of keeping their feet on the ground—or whether such people, like manananggals, are mythical creatures that do not exist in real life.
I thought Irineo’s insight was profound.
Rule 96. Take accountability. Others have their own lives to lead. Expound on the topic yourself.
I just wrote a bit about the Mananangggal in this comment: https://joeam.com/2026/10/24/the-illusion-of-status-dona-victorina-colonial-mentality-and-the-filipino-social-climber/#comment-511231 but I do hope CV takes a look at the entire subthread convo between Joey and myself. I would add something from the movie Forgotten Island as well, which CV I guess has neither watched nor heard of from kids and grandkids (SPOIILERS AHEAD):
Raissa, the one of the two friends who is talented and gets a Caltech scholarship, wanting to work at Jet Propulsion Laboratories and NASA, steals one of the two wing pairs of the Manananggal on the Forgotten Island (Nakali or Nakalimutan) and many have taken that as her wanting to soar but slowly growing distant from her friend Jo who is artistically talented but seems to NOT have any goal except staying in the Philippines, working in a chicken fastfood joint and often wearing a chicken suit. Raissa’s mother say she is a rocket and Jo is a boulder on the night before she flies to the USA. Won’t spoiler the core of the ending but the “moral of the story” of “Forgotten Island” is “don’t forget where you came from”, very fitting for a Dreamworks movie directed by a Fil-Am (Januel Mercado) and an American married to a Filipina (Joel Crawford) and set in the 1990s when some people they know left for the USA. Jo does manage to soar as well in her own way – she is the only one the colorful Sarimanok of Nakali accepts as a “driver”, and I guess (spoiling the epilogue here) that her later career drawing comics is not just a nice wink at the colleagues in the Philippines who helped create the film (Dreamworks outsourced large parts of it) but also “hey, art is a legit career too” which not all Pinoy (even Fil-Am) parents might at first accept.
Lovely background. Makes me smile.
somewhat OT, this shows Lea Salonga enjoying doing the voice role for the Manananggal, I think her first villain/antagonist role.
https://x.com/screenrant/status/2113677085088641059 (0:36 BTW is part of the short scene I mentioned at the end of the movie)
I think we can safely conclude that Doña Consolacion was not a manananggal. As Karl Garcia pointed out, she rose in society through marriage to a Spaniard but lost touch with her roots—unlike manananggals in Irineo’s observation. Weird in a sense.
Some stuff to think about:
• Post-colonial studies, which is an Anglo-American-centric rigid binary racially-based framework, did immense damage in academia and how academia approaches the colonial period today. See oppressor-oppressed binary.
• Spanish Limpieza de sangre (“purity of blood”), which the casta system was based on, was about degree of religious assimilation, not racial segregation. As such Indios (e.g. Filipinos) were classified as “New Christians” free from the “taint” of Judaism and Islam, thus allowed Indios to advance to hold office (principalía), head religious brotherhoods (cofradías), but probably more importantly, own land.
• Casta categories were a fiscal classification system for taxation and drafted labor purposes. Under casta, mestizos de sangley actually paid the most taxes (2x the standard, orindio rate). This is why many Chinese got baptized and Hispanized, since assimilation meant access to social advancement.
• Spain was already a multi-ethnic, multi-racial country, so casta was negotiable and fluid. Gracias al sacar (literally “thanks for the removal”) was an official mechanism that allowed racially mixed subjects to “upgrade” their racial classification, even up to blanco and Español status despite not being “pure” White or Spanish.
• The Ilustrado had prominent mestizo de sangley membership, who got to their high social position by these exact legal mechanisms.
• Obsession with fair skin predated Spanish colonization and was part of Austronesian socio-economic caste systems. See here the Bukidnon epic Hinilawod where the heroes are obsessed with protecting their faces to prevent the sun from darkening their “radiant complexion,” especially when it comes to courting women.
• Likewise, the pre-colonial practice of binukot (“veiling”) seclusion of young women since childhood within the home by their families to keep their skin fair, therefore being able to demand a higher dowry from suitors. Fair skin was connected to high status.
• Other Austro-Malayo-Polynesian cultures also placed high emphasis on fair skin. Javanese epics celebrated kuning langsat (“golden-fair skin,” i.e. fair and radiant skin). At the time of European contact with Tahiti and Samoa, both cultures still practiced seclusion of young women, for the same reasons as binukot. Fair skin in Austronesian culture seemed to be associated with high rank, good health, and spiritual potency.
• Like how the masa processed the pasyon through the native (Austronesian) moral economy as explored by Reynaldo Ileto, one might presume that the peasant class also re-interpreted the casta system through the same indigenous frameworks. Filtered through the loob, the poor viewed themselves as morally pure/light while those of high casta were viewed as morally dark (buti/itim), even though casta was not a racial categorical system.
• Moral darkness implies a failure to validate one’s responsibility to kapwa, which meant sharing wealth and giving patronage (a “good datu”); not sharing wealth and acting superior to the group meant moral illegitimacy (walang hiya).
• Basically as I understand kapwa is horizontal, expects a distributive relational economy (loans, gifts, favors). Someone who adopted the datu role, whether they chose to or not, is expected to redistribute what they gained, or Austronesian shame-based social enforcement comes in; expressed today through -> social climber, ambisyoso, nagmamaganda, or pasikat. Crab mentality did not come from colonialism. It is the cultural operating system working as intended to humble someone who got ahead but did not share the gains as expected.
• Doña Victorina in coating her face with harina that cracks, adopting European dress, and marrying a poor quack doctor just because he was Spanish could be seen as an attempt to “become Española” without going through gracias al sacar.
• Doña Victorina’s OA is still alive today, in conyos.
The Karpman triangle is often a way more accurate model for a lot of things that happen in history.
my great-great-grandfather Marcelino Saenz, the abaca planter, was referred to as an indio in 1880s documents but as a holder of a 6th class cedula in the 1890s. By that time, so many people had gotten rich beyone their original “station” so the casta system became meaningless. In the 1880s, the 9th class cedula owner Saenz (“Don” Marcelino in SOME documents but not in others) bought land from would have also been an “indio” like him, even if 6th class was as a medium sized landowner and 9th class was a smallholder.
Allegedly Son Tua (the Tuason ancestor) was “made Spanish” by the King for helping defend Manila’s uplands from the British. Of course I can’t verify if this is true.
a modern variant of that would be BINI fans praising BINI Stacey, the whitest member of the group, as having her “own ring light”.
that mindset amplified by the American oppressor-oppressed binary Filipino academe also adopted (P.S. masa = good and elitista = bad dichotomy in much of Filipino public discourse) helped create Erap populism first and Dutertismo later.
P.P.S. Though Ninotchka Rosca described VP Leni as “luminous” and I think she meant it in moral terms. I am also not surprised that many of VP Leni’s Bikol supporters are just like her devotees of Ina, the Lady of Penafrancia though I admit not knowing much about that – even as there is a similar devotion to Nuestra Senora de la Salvacion in Joroan, Tiwi that is maritime and not fluvial like in Naga, and both probably have pre-Christian roots that deserve to be looked into.
An actor like Joel Torre is also beloved because he employs his own family in his chicken restaurants – aside from being one of the Philippines’ best character actors.
Katas ng Saudi jeepney mindset.
It has in it’s populist political variant made competence “elitist”. Of course those among the educated who used their knowledge to act superior are partly at fault for that perception.
Those who like Dr. Mahar Lagmay give back can potentially change that mentality as a modern state needs more competence than a barangay of olden days.
There are old jokes about bagong salta in the USA pretending to have a completely American accent.
though those who mocked Liza Soberano as “konyo” for her Americanized accent in Netflix Trese are stupid as she partly grew up in the USA. Maybe those who made the series should have considered the minefield the Philippines still often is in such matters.
P.P.P.S. the typical conyos are more the Paulita Gomez types who would nowadays go to Assumption, usually the Dona Victorina types are seen as too TH (trying hard) to be fully taken seriously in “Intramuros”.
I guess the Dona Consolacions (the wife of the alferez in the Noli who tortured Sisa) of today are worse than the comedic Dona Victorina.
Some of these Dona Consolacions are now the abusive call center managers you mentioned elsewhere. A few from your other comment are Padre Salvi or Padre Camorra types.
sorry, I cannot relate to any donya consolacions but the toxic environment in some of today’s bpos, and the pursuit of high performance standard make for hyper vigilance among call center agents. coupled with angry and disgruntled callers that demand and insisted on immediate solutions to problems add much to the stress and discomfort of call agents no matter how well trained they are. call centers are high stress jobs and abuse comes from all sides, some agents expect so much of themselves, putting pressures on themselves that they summat forgot to breath and relax, dreading the next abusive calls and threats, with the boss looking over their shoulders expecting nothing but excellence from them, every time, all the time.
but overall, bpos maintain a professional approach, hr standards, employees wellness and legal compliance. else they lose license to operate.
it wont be long before call centers are taken over by AI, with chatbots doing greater frontline jobs and customer service, bots never get stressed. though many call centers now also operate as troll farms! spreading misinformation and disinformation. some got raided, like the one in pampanga where agents were mostly foreign workers with questionable visa.
I finally dared to ask Gemini some lingering questions I always had including possible connections to the shapeshifting snakewoman Oryol of the Ibalong and got this:
surprised actually that the Tiwi lore I read about or heard about that Oryol is the guardian of the hot springs there is “known” to Gemini. But it makes sense and the stuff I recall (again I don’t know where I got that from and can’t verify it) that the barangay near the hot springs now called Cale was still called Naga by some locals makes sense.
There is also an interesting aspect in the present animated movie “Forgotten Island”, directed by the Puss in Boots Dreamworks team Januel Mercado (a Fil-Am) and Joel Crawford (married to a Filipina) – the Manananggal is not just dark but spreads darkness when she is around, but there is a moment at the end (a bit of a redemption arc I will not spoil) where she not just smiles and closes her eyes blissfully but also is suddenly white and radiant in her face. Probably Mercado instinctively applying Pinoy cultural sensibilities to that figure?
Of course there are theories and studies about manananggals actually being diwatas who were painted as evil by Spanish missionaries, just like the picture of Oryol in the Ibalong which after all only survived in the version of a Spanish priest, or allegedly Yawa was not a witch in ancient Visayan cosmology but a diwata who could be both good and dangerous, just like Oryol her possible “nature guardian” role. Actually Oryol confronting “Handyong from Bhottavara” – probably another prince from further South with ambitions of rule makes sense if one sees her as a guardian of in this case the Bikol river where Handyong established his rule.
I’m not entirely sure here, but I do know that Bikol didn’t have direct Indianization and still kept a lot of animist practices at the time of Spanish contact. Despite not having direct Indianization, it does seem that many themes and motifs from the Ibalong line up remarkably to the major Hindu epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Btw, Naga featured prominently in both the Ramayana and the Mahabharata.
In Indian mythology, the Naga were actually a race of snake-like beings (the Nagini) who were able to shapeshift into humans or were hybrid half-serpent-half-human. The Nagini were not a monolith; they were split into benevolent and vengeful beings, sometimes both.
The suanggi (preserved in Indonesia) may have been a native Austronesian forest spirit that remained untouched from Arabization or Indianization. From what I know a suanggi a spirit which is created from feelings of isolation, disease, and fears that manifests itself in the dense jungle. IIRC Oryol’s father was Asuang.
One thing the Spanish might have changed was the gender of the manananggal. I remembered I read an account by a Franciscan friar back when LCPL_X would talk about this a lot, and looked it up: it’s Customs of the Tagalogs by Fr. Juan de Plasencia, where the friar records the magtatangal as being a male sorcerer who wandered at night causing terror with his head and entrails detached before re-attaching in the morning and becoming a man again. There might have been some conflation with the babaylan in order to dismantle the native animism. The vampire-like attributes were probably added much later after the European vampire panics in the mid-1700s “got to the Philippines.”
The detached head/torso “floating ghost” probably traces back to Northern Vietnam/Southern China. The mythical creature or a variant of it is common in many cultures from these areas as well. This area was inhabited by the advanced metalworking rice-growing Baiyue (the Hundred Yue) during the Bronze Age (9th century BC), of which Vietnamese people are a part of (Viet = Yue). The Baiyue were not necessarily one ethnic group or proto-ethnic group, but rather they were a proto-cultural group possibly made up of more than one ethnic group which all shared common culture. The proto-Austronesians spent time in the area and likely had cultural exchanges before going onward to the island of Formosa and becoming Austronesians. Every single Yue-descendant culture has a type of “floating ghost,” which was adopted by the Han Chinese as well. The Chinese call the vengeful flying spirit with detached body the “flying head barbarian,” which gives hints that it was not originally part of Han Chinese mythology.
AFAIK Austronesian culture didn’t really have a binary worldview, but rather a relational worldview which emphasized harmony between the physical and spiritual worlds. So I would expect the pre-Spanish ancient cosmology to reflect that relational balance as well, not a binary one.
In Indian epics like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, the major theme is the triumph of absolute good over absolute evil through destruction. One big difference between the Ibalong and the Indian template the Bikolano epic probably borrowed from is that a major theme in the Ibalong is the restoration of relational balance. Where the relational balance is disturbed, it must be returned. Where the relational balance is transformed, a new balance must be found. I think the interpretation is that where there is conflict, such as in opposing forces as Oryol and Handyong originally were, the forces need to be harmonized in order to restore (spiritual) equilibrium.
Where Handyong initially tries to destroy the forest where Oryol lives, and where Oryol at first lures human encroachers to their deaths, when they choose to ally with one another, it may be a metaphor for humans learning how to survive with the land rather than simply conquering it. Some of the old practices like kaingin (rotating slash-and-burn agriculture) and muttering “tabi tabi po” when entering the forest might show different ways pre-contact Austronesians viewed this balance, and provide examples of how important a negotiated, balanced relationship, mediated if need be, was to the culture. As for Oryol becoming a guardian, couldn’t one make the case that anito and diwata are the embodiment of the previously chaotic nature spirits which once in harmony with humans became beneficial?
it reminds me of something I read in Prosperity without Progress (I have to borrow that book from my brother and read it in full at some point) that the intrusion of abaca planters forced many farmers of their land (probably not their land in the old sense, just where they did kaingin) and increased banditry. The little I know about the abaca boom in Tiwi has major names in it coming from OUTSIDE Bikol: Mayor Higino Templado was Kapampangan, he signed most of “Don” Marcelino’s land documents in 1881-1882, my great-grandfather Hilario Salazar came from Batangas and married “Donya” Josefa, and Saenz too was not a native Tiwi name like Corral, Clutario or Carbonnel – Tiwi got B/C surnames on the 1849 Claveria list.
Well, definitely there are Clutarios who descend from the first mayor Templado nowadays, and Carbonnels who are cousins of Salazars – and everybody speaks Bikol, it is the opposite of Davao where the Bisayan settlers’ language “won”. What I don’t know (yet) is how the present balance in old abaca country came about. Or how the Albay/Cam Sur Pacific border which includes Tiwi had a lot of NPA “retiring” and now is getting more affluent.
There is a political aspect to that as well. When Habibie put Suharto under house arrest and I was surprised about it, my father said Suharto did the same for Sukarno. “It is not about right or wrong, it’s just circumstances”.
Maybe the dissonance between expectations explains some issues in the Philippines. Sonny mentioned that not going too hard after Marcoses was important to prevent venganza from happening. Mar Roxas had Erap released from jail “for national reconciliation” – interesting that he no matter how elite he is understood that. Aquino keeping Arroyo in jail and impeaching CJ Corona had Duterte “hitting back” via Leila de Lima and CJ Sereno. Marcos Jr. understood I think “the balance” in getting Leila de Lima out of jail. He only started moving against VP Inday Sara Duterte when she broke the balance by making full threats, and even then he managed to do it quite deftly – just allowing the ICC to take Duterte and then moving General Torre out of the line of fire. He did NOT I think put too much effort into catching Bato. There were intellectuals who said that Marcos Sr.’s sense of power was “Javanese” but maybe the variant his son practices works best there. Being remarkably off-hand when it comes to the impeachment proceedings of VP inday Sara Duterte – as far as I know, as I am not fully up to date on that.
Or maybe Marcos Jr. had some advice from Enrile, who said “one does not kill anyone of any importance, that is simply not done” when Ninoy was murdered. That near immortal just like Kissinger and similarly cynical knew his Realpolitik. Oh BTW the Ramayana movie is coming to international theatres soon, and indeed the trailer does illustrate the adage about elephants fighting and making the grass suffer.
Here’s an pdf copy of Prosperity Without Progress that I have which you can download:
Prosperity Without Progress (2020 Reprint) pdf
Re: Elite behavior
The elite behavior you cited might be examples of vendettas between elites, which was a thing in the Austronesian world as well, and seemed to be a form elite competition could take at times. So too was ending vendettas by showing magnanimity towards one’s elite-peers.
AFAIK before the performance condition requirement of loyalty was severed by the reducción, datus had to prove competence in order to retain followers. IMHO in order to truly move the Philippines forward, that link needs to be connected again somehow, updated for modern circumstances.
done, thanks. That plus the book History of Abaca (which I have) plus (some of) the land papers of my folks (187?-197?) will keep me busy over the coming winter.
The real cédula system was introduced in 1884 as a modernization of the casta system, shifting from religious-cultural assimilation (where “blood” was negotiable) to a 10-class socio-economic system. So instead of “becoming more Español” via religous and cultural assimilation, one would instead “become Español” by purely economic means. The real cédula was mainly because the Spanish Empire was attempting to modernize due to inability to continue subsidizing the Philippine colony, which never became profitable during the entire Spanish colonial period. Your great-great-great-grandfather’s case likely illustrates how there was a rush to “upgrade” status at the time by those who managed to accumulate more economic standing.
Gracias al sacar was introduced in 1795, so Son Tua’s elevation to hidalguía (enoblement) in 1775 predated that mechanism by about 20 years. So the Tuasons were actually outside of the tax system entirely by nature of them being Spanish nobles (since technically they were only accountable directly to the Crown, not through the governor).
Here the binary view of American academia (and European academia more broadly) comes from the Levantine/Middle Eastern binary worldview, as seen in the Abrahamic religions (including Christianity), Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism, and other Gnostic traditions. One would need to embed oneself like William Henry Scott, living among and respecting the culture being studied, to really understand the root culture. Sadly many Filipino academics don’t seem to even do this themselves in Philippine academia.
The Austronesian base culture was one of finding balance, including relational balance between beings and spirits. An area of interest for me are the vast number of syncretic Millenarian groups which rose up among the masa who filtered the Pasyon through their native understanding as a reaction to external pressures, like the Cofradia, Rizalistas, Colorums, Sakdals, Babaylan movement, etc. The Pasyon, of course, being a simplified story of binaries (Good vs. Evil, Light vs. Darkness, Oppressed vs. Oppressor).
One alarming thing I’ve been watching in the last decade is that Philippine academia is exporting its more far-left elements back to the US and onward to the broader West. There is a lot of collaboration between Filipino far-left academics and groups with American and European far-left academics and groups, where the Philipine side is imparting organizing tactics. If you may have noticed, there is a seemingly huge rise of far-left narratives in the West where they are utterly convinced that they have supermajority support in the population of their countries even though their ideas repulse regular people (like what is happening in France right now fighting over “ayuda”). There always seems to be a Philippine connection somehow.
I’ve never had an issue with Class D/E’s thinking I was being elitist, since they can see that I’m not maarte and am willing to get dirty doing chores most middle class and elite Filipinos would think beneath them. I can climb coconut trees and I can plant kamote. Ironically the Filipinos who have called me elitist are usually… out of touch elites who never left their bubbles… The masa are super eager to learn and respect people who show them directly how to improve themselves. They want to earn also. It’s sad too few people, Filipino or otherwise, are willing to help. Of course one must also be aware of being scammed or falling for guilttrips as well, which happens sometimes.
These bagong salta migrants end up sounding quite exaggerated in their English. Most Americans don’t really care about accents, even in the most White (and potentially racist) places in the US, as long as someone can speak English. Amusingly watching French media about these ongoing far-left riots in France, I thought it funny that the French talking heads when interviewed in English have exaggerated French accents, which is on purpose. Educated French people who learned English as a second language since elementary school have normal English accents, usually British English. The British when speaking French do not try to have a weird British accent.
I find this reaction kind of sad. Because if I speak broken Tagalog or broken Cebuano in a very obvious Kano accent, Filipinos would think I’m amazing or cute or endearing for trying. But someone who has a drop of Filipino blood is treated unkindly if they step outside of expectations, even if they were not immersed in the Philippines. My best friend (from Hong Kong) did not speak any Tagalog until high school and college when she went to Ateneo, still has a British accent when she speaks Tagalog and is mocked for it behind her back by others.
Yes, which contributes to the insane turnover rate in the BPO industry. Some turnover is good and voluntary, because it allows for flexibility for the worker, but there is a lot of burnout-related turnover or people being informally blacklisted altogether due too various reasons (refused sexual advances, killjoy by not going to “group bonding,” and being marked as “cheap,” etc.).
it was usually my mother who took me to the UP Infirmary when I needed to go there as a child, but the one time my father did, we went to Dr. Saenz there who happened to be his second cousin, same great-grandfather.
I think it was Dr. Saenz who mentioned “Don” Marcelino riding a horse and having a whip and a rifle, very much the style of a landlord of the Spanish Empire in those days, echoes of Zorro whether legend or not.
in any case the kuwentuhan between the two (in Tagalog probably so I would understand) went on for long and the other patients waiting outside had to be patient, and included harana in Albay of yore.
including Valentin delos Santos.. a Bikolano who Will Villanueva mentioned as someone yellow should NOT emulate – even as his going to EDSA in 1986 was deeply motivated by his faith, his prayer group going everywhere including visiting De Lima in jail AND camping outside the Senate when Trillanes was in danger had a mix of religious and patriotic fervor (though more middle class of course with Will carrying the flag and leading prayers) and he as a man from Naga also did not fail to mention how Mayor Leni is a devotee of “Ina” which is a somewhat different form of syncretism, similar to the Marian devotion Will always had as a classic dilawan but definitely more “native”..
fortunately there were just a few who now somehow took offense at how H.E.R. pronounced “Nakalimutan” as Jo at the start of Forgotten Island, of course in a clearly American accent especially the t.
the excitement among a lot of Filipinos at a Philippine theme being main character in a Hollywood movie made it gross big over there, even if it was not so strong in the US box office.
I haven’t had a chance to watch Forgotten Island yet, but it looks like the film was pulled from North American theaters after only 2 weeks of disappointing ticket sales. Amazing, DreamWorks greenlighted a $80 million budget, which is quite big for a movie of this type. DreamWorks won’t recover their investment it seems, which probably puts an end to Filipino-centered storytelling in American media for a while. Typically films need to earn 2x the budget in order to start breaking even due to marketing and distribution costs. There were many billboards and public transportation terminal ads for the movie. Still, I think it’s a sign of American openness to new things and willingness to invest in something that might not make it to invest in making this movie. That risk-taking probably wouldn’t happen in the Philippines.
Something I thought was weird was that the all the positive critic reviews in the media for Forgotten Island and the super high (95%) verified audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes has two types of audience (user) scores, all users and users who verified their movie ticket. That means that randos from the Philippines can’t boost the audience rating. Then I looked at a dozen or so media critic reviews (mostly Filipino surnames on the byline). I looked at the Rotten Tomatoes audience score (almost every 4-5 star review had a plausibly Filipino name or obviously Filipino name, while non-Filipino reviewers were negative). On the Rotten Tomatoes audience reviews the common complaints were that the story didn’t make sense; the plot moved too fast incongruously; or it had way too many dark themes for (non-Filipino) kids.
I see the same weird behavior by the kabayan too, with BINI and other P-Pop groups: massive and enthusiastic over-hyping of Pinoy stuff to create a sense of super popularity, especially by the abroad kabayan while also having Pinoys who work in media to write glowing endorsements published in mainstream entertainment magazines. But those who actually show up are basically almost all Pinoys. That happened with BINI at Coachella too. Forgotten Island was totally hyped on social media by Pinoys abroad and back home, yet in terms of ticket sales it did badly… That seems like a way to shoot oneself in the foot in the long run.
The sad part is by the time I get around to watching Forgotten Island (on digital streaming), the movie probably will be pretty decent. The pacing issues match Filipino film, which can be jumpy at times, or stuff that makes perfect sense unsaid to in-groups seems incongruent to those “not in the know.” Since I understand that stuff, I’ll probably enjoy the movie when I watch it. But others won’t. Sadly hype-ups don’t translate to revenues…
after 3 weeks – I watched stuff pretty closely, but yes it didn’t do that well. It did even worse in Germany where it released later. Major multiplexes that usually pull crowds having showings where NOBODY bought tickets..
unless the digital sales which start tomorrow (Amazon Prime etc.) do well, but the present box office internationally is just 67M$ or so, with the UK where it started very late bringing in solid numbers BTW.
I focused a lot on the German reviews and one of the nicest ones called Forgotten Island “delightfully bonkers” (herrlich durchgeknallt) while some parents warned about the Manananggal. Pinoys here in Germany posted on Facebook that they witnessed German kids crying about the Manananggal. Other German reviews said the “second act” of the movie was overloaded, and I agree a bit with that – I watched the movie twice and understood some stuff better the second time. There were non-Filipino reviews which noted the passion with which the movie was made. That definitely is true, maybe the overload was Direk Mercado going overboard a bit with his passion.
I watched the BINI Coachella week 1 performance livestream and even if the place was packed, the front meaning 1/3 of the people in the venue were definitely mostly Filipinos – with a few content creators catering to Filipino crowds.
The BINI Signals World Tour this year also struggled to sell tickets in North America inspite of Coachella hype, even if they had reduced the venues compared to the Biniverse World Tour in 2025. It still attracted mostly diaspora.
The European leg was cancelled altogether. The Australian leg which was a bit later did well, which somehow parallels how Forgotten Island had the best box office figures outside the USA in Australia – why I don’t fully get.
I wonder what the UK Filipinos do differently as Forgotten Island did well there and BINI in London would have been packed if Europe as a whole had not been cancelled and Dubai couldn’t take place this year for obvious reasons.
Maybe the UK environment has taught them to have a bit more “nonchalance”, keep more of a stiff upper lip as the OA a lot of us definitely have won’t fly over there. I met my British brother-in-law recently BTW, an advertising man.
We talked a bit about Forgotten Island / KPop Demon Hunters and PPop/KPop among other things, and he said that Korea as a brand is associated with high tech while the Filipino brand is associated with “workers of the world” – and he is NOT anti-Pinoy at all.. it is an assessment surprisingly similar to yours actually, and should be a motivation for us all to keep pushing on the capability front in this blog.
It is like the issues I had especially with the articles in my older blog or my older comments, or in some of my 2020 articles – Edgar Lores said the passion shone through even if it was often disorderly. Of course the Filipino temperament will never produce stuff with the restraint of Kurosawa or the quiet tightness of Swedish detective movies, but some control over the inner OA is probably needed.
And yes, a communication trainer at an old job told us that references that puzzle people might make the rest of what we are saying hard to understand as people get caught up in them. In this case even words like lola, tita, mano po..
OK I will not spoiler more than I already have, but the ending especially with respect to the two villains/antagonists puzzled a lot of Westerners, but makes perfect sense if seen via the Austronesian idea of restoring balance instead of trying to defeat evil. One could make a case for some of the jokes being a bit gross for at least Europeans, but funny as hell for Pinoys.. minor clues to not spoiler are “bawal umihi dito” and “bawal umutot dito”.
a lot of the Pinoy soft power stuff of today and the Pinoy Pride stuff that preceded it are driven more by the emotional need to feel seen than by anything pragmatic. It might come across “kulang sa pansin” meaning trying hard to get attention. Maybe Americans are too polite to get across to Pinoys that there are things they just don’t care about – I already have had my OA flattened decades ago over here, Germans will tell you “we are not interested in that” to your face.
Probably soft power including earning from it will come the moment when most Filipinos no longer care if the world notices them or not. Because sometimes the motivation of a lot of the diaspora is similar to the movie “Sunday Beauty Queen” from 2016 about HK Pinay domestic helpers who did beauty pageants to feel like stars for a while. I heard something similar from a Samar woman in Germany of the 1990s who was working as a maid for diplomats, she told me that the expensive Pinoy association parties in hotels made them feel they were “not workers” for a night. That motivation can fill OFW concerts – a recent Jaya concert in Munich had VIP tickets for €160 and normal tickets for €90, mostly nurses attended.
Of course I did not attend that concert with a singing male nurse and influencer in Germany as an opening act. Often Pinoy stuff even struggles to have appeal to the larger Pinoy bubble. Often even abroad we are still too insular.
P.S. https://x.com/CartoonEmpire_/status/2114695853474496565 about the Australian box office of Forgotten Island:
P.P.S. https://www.showtimes.com/movie-times/forgotten-island-194536/los-angeles-ca/ turns out Forgotten Island is still showing in SOME places in the USA inspite of everything.
though https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0FV1A27CPGDX8G4QS0PK5S8YXW comes out tomorrow and it seems the UHD format is amazing in general.. DVD and blue ray come out on Dec 1st..
P.P.P.S. the National Village mindset of thinking “how loud your barangay is will make you win” definitely isn’t sufficient in the Global Village is what this all proves, I guess.. it will get you noticed but not necessarily get you in the door or even more important, keep you in the room
Theatrical releases usually bring in way more money than digital streaming. I think the problem here with Forgotten Island is it was developed, marketed, and distributed as a theatrical film, with the huge marketing and distribution budget needed, but then commercially failed in the box office. Shifting to digital streaming so fast is like the modern version of direct-to-VHS/DVD. If they had taken the digital streaming route the marketing and distribution budget wouldn’t have needed to be so high. See K-Pop Demon Hunters, which was digital first, earning nearly $400 million on streaming alone and where the theatrical release was a bonus for fans who wanted to rewatch on the “big screen.”
I had actually calculated the break-even for Forgotten Island a bit conservatively, using the 2x budget figures I was familiar with during my short stint in the film industry decades ago. Apparently DreamWorks was hoping to earn at least $200 million to break even. One could probably say it is a breakthrough in itself that a Fil-Am was able to convince a major studio to greenlight the movie; there are a lot of Fil-Ams working in the American entertainment industry as creatives. I still think the failure on ROI bodes badly for subsequent Pinoy-centric films in the near future though. Corporations may take risks, but they are not charities.
Usually Filipino storytelling is quite convoluted and can be long-winded, with the necessary requirement of knowing a lot of small unsaid contextual details to understand the plot. So a 109 minute (1h49m) runtime is too short to tell the whole story. From firsthand sitting nearby lolas retelling (their version) of Filipino epics, sometimes it can take hours or even days to finish the story, weaved around other activities like eating and gathering.
A lot of Fil-Ams are also quite passionate people, which can be an endearing trait of Filipinos. But if one thinks more broadly about filmmaking, when cultural layers are peeled back films are usually about universal themes, not vehicles of in-group messaging. IMHO Filipino storytelling tends to be heavily in-group oriented, which might explain why non-Pinoy reviewers came out of the viewing with a confused “huh?” It does look like the writer and director attempted to apply the universal theme of finding one’s roots, but only superficially and briefly in a way that is not easily understood by a non-Pinoy audience.
Yeah and the fact that the area right in front of the stage was filled by Pinoys probably hurts groups like BINI in the long run. Also at music festivals, festival-goers are just there generally wandering around. Sometimes they stop at a venue while a particular artist/group is performing simply to check it out or rest while figuring out which stage to go to next. I used to go to a lot of music festivals when I was younger, and wouldn’t take a few instances of crowd sizes at major multi-stage festivals as an indicator of popularity.
Filipinos in Australia were relatively few in the early 2000s. Just looked up the numbers and in 2006 there were 160k Filipinos in Australia and in 2026 there were 532k, more than a 3.3x growth. Unlike in the US where the Fil-Am population is a lot more established, the Australian population is largely working class and skilled workers. They also tend to be a lot younger. Anecdotally from my own observation, it seemed like there were a lot more of probinsyano and masa in origin. The same is for New Zealand. In both Australia and New Zealand there are a lot of Filipino laborers in industrial/mining on fixed-time period visas. Though usually the educated and technical migrants (e.g. nurses, doctors, engineers) who are much fewer in number get highlighted back home.
The great majority of UK Filipinos migrated there to work in the health sector, so they are highly educated. So even if they also had humble origins they learned not to be as OA as they are operating in different cultural circles.
Something to think on is: Toy Story 5 earned 1.3x as much as Forgotten Island. So if Filipinos in the Philippines are not showing support, that might tell us something about the movie as well — the film is very narrowly tailored to the Filipino diaspora, specifically the Filipino-Amerian diaspora, and the message might not be universal even among Filipinos…
On this topic I think it is very important to acknowledge that there have been many before who have tried to do exactly this: increase capability. A critical blind spot, I think, is that the educated Filipino tends to forget “his roots” and becomes somewhat paternalistic in a modern time where one cannot “order” those below as much anymore. Better to meet people where they are and show them how doing things a new way can be beneficial. I think the enclave-expansion idea I have been playing with is a good model to begin with.
I’ll use the example of Japan where the Japanese create media, music, and anime for themselves, then it’s up to others to find appreciation for Japanese culture, not Japanese people trying to constantly get others to recognize them. Japanese media is extremely Japanese yet still contain a large degree of universal themes that has made Japanese culture so popular. China, on the other hand often comes off as a try-hard, always boasting about how great they are and needing to one-up others even though most of what they produce is only a copy (even if the copies have become quite good copies).
And yes, Americans generally are too polite to be unnecessarily unkind, even though certain Europeans love to bash Americans with the caricature of being uncouth, rude, bordering on barbaric. Not Germans though, I’ve found Germans to be fair in criticism and very measured. But I constantly have arguments with my French relatives about this.
The Vietnamese diaspora has this too, and my parents knew the owners and producers of the two largest diaspora pageant and variety shows in the 1980s to 2000s. I think this is something diaspora people do, regardless of ethnicity. Eventually by the 2nd or 3rd generation the diaspora feels more confident, and starts contributing back home too. For Fil-Ams it has been 4-5 generations since 1900. Even if Fil-Ams are split into 3 (1900-1965, 1965-2000, 2000-Present), and the first 1/3 not looked into, Third Republic-Martial Law cohort have already been here 3-4 generations yet there is still a sense of lacking confidence among a lot of Fil-Ams I know from this group despite being “integrated.”
Had a look here and it seems the theaters in the Los Angeles area (which has a large Fil-Am population) which are still playing Forgotten Island are smaller cinemas with small screens. A 8-screen cinema in the US is considered “small” and possibly a budget cinema. It looks like the movie was already taken out from cineplexes and megaplexes, which usually have 2-4 IMAX screens, and 10-20 other screens of various sizes.
The problem here might be that Filipinos who have this mentality don’t realize that the non-Filipinos or outsiders they are trying to impress don’t share the same culture, therefore it either doesn’t make sense to the outsider or the outsider is simply not impressed. Then the reaction is typically to try harder. In other cultures respect is earned by someone giving it, usually after observing why one should be respected, meaning one has exhibited values and traits that are admirable and worthy of being copied. Chasing respect usually doesn’t actually gain respect… I still think this is mostly a problem for the elites, since they are the modern version of a datu-like class who feel the need to perform to impress. I don’t think the DEs really have this problem, and are open to learning new things.
The Western novel coming closest to Filipino storytelling is The Tesseract by Joel Garland, more known as author of “The Beach” – who was one of the intrepid backpacking tourists that went to the Philippines in the nineties and noughties, and both novels are derived from experience there. The Tesseract is especially Filipino in that it jumps back and forth in time, so one has to piece together things. And yes Filipino culture in general is high context.
https://nerdtropolis.com/forgotten-island-directors-interview/ the directors say the plot of Forgotten Island is a bit like Hangover, but the whole idea of having Jo and Raissa reconstruct 12 hours that happened which they forgot – and how that reconstruction is told – isn’t as complex as The Tesseract but still challenging.
I have seen often enough how Germans dealing with Pinoys of masa background that get closer to them get confused by how they tell stories – time is very linear here..
And Pinoy groups abroad often can give off an “insiders only” vibe inspite of all friendliness. That has I think caused many a Pinoy restaurant in Germany to fail.
I also wondered why for instance SB19 had many foreign fans in their late 2023 Chicago concert but skipped Chicago during the 2025 tour – did those foreigners experience stuff similar to what I have seen happen to non-Filipinos who got involved with Pinoy overseas organizations in Germany and eventually left, shaking their heads?
P.S. what I liked about the Forgotten Island English version screening I attended in Munich (in THE place that shows the Rocky Horror Picture Show every Friday and Saturday since June 24, 1977) was the healthy mix of Filipinos, Germans etc. – less potentially toxic, within liberalitas Bavariae
there are Filipinos in the Philippines openly skeptical of the movie, though I am happy to say that Prof. Xiao Chua has quite promoted it. Of course Xiao also helped “The Filipino Story” channel, but there is nothing wrong in principle with building bridges.
In fact Forgotten Island via Raissa (the one who migrates) and Jo (the one who stays) tries to bridge a gap that was growing for quite a while.
I wonder how much of the problem is with those back home who expect everyone to have the same pronunciation, know the latest “What Haffen Vella” stuff to fit in etc etc – I think there is parochialism at home but also insularity of some abroad, and even those at home see their point of view on their island or even on their side of the island as the only right and real view, of course those in the centers of power and wealth more than those who are not there. P.P.P.S. many, maybe even most Filipinos in the Philippines and abroad have pantayo-tayong pananaw, meaning centered very much on their own in-group and the very specific way they do things and what they like as the measure of all things..
well, I recall a Frenchman in the 1970s telling me “the Germans are the Americans of Europe” and he did NOT mean it nicely. He meant braggarts with big cars and all that.
Re Frenchmen, a father of a friend at university, a German NATO officer formerly in Paris told me a few stories I now recall haha..
the wannabe datus among overseas Filipinos who are often C-class in origin can be the worst. Though online Pinoy clout-chasers are “worsest”.
actually the online mentality of “I have many followers” and the old datu mentality are a most toxic fit.
P.P.S. “to try harder” reminded me of the Filipino expression “TH” or trying hard. That mindset can of course never be cool.
A lot of verified audience reviews without Pinoy-sounding names mentioned that they walked out of the theater midway through Forgotten Island; the reasons given were boredom to the convoluted story or disgust that the ostensibly kid-friendly film wasn’t exactly kid-friendly (for Western audiences). The opening week movie-going audience are usually evangelizers to their friends and family to get more people to watch the movie, so it must have been pretty bad. Filipinos are really good at reading the room in a Filipino context, but I’ve found Filipinos to be absolutely terrible at reading the room in non-Filipino contexts. The effusive promotion by the community tends to turn non-Filipinos off… I think a more universal message probably would’ve played better to non-Filipino audiences.
Amusingly, even Pinoy kids shows like Kokey are super complicated with a lot of in-messaging. It took me a long time to figure out the plot lines in the Kokey universe.
I think the current Spider-Man arc portrays Peter Parker’s loyal best friend Ned Leeds quite well. If you recall in this version of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Ned Leeds was re-cast from an Anglo-Caucasian in the comics to a Filipino-American. The character was well-received. I forgot where I had read about it but allegedly the Fil-Am creatives working for Marvel on the MCU pushed for the Ned Leeds character to be Fil-Am. They also injected Pinoy humor and cultural references into the re-imagined Ned Leeds character, as well as having the character be a source of amusing but profound Pinoy utterances, which was equally well-received. There are a lot of Fil-Am creatives working in Hollywood. I think the positive reception of that character was that the character embodied a more universal Everyman theme that allowed non-Pinoy audiences to connect with the character.
My personal experience is that as a “foreigner,” when I maintain distance I am usually treated with (unwanted) excessive deference but when I “get close” I essentially “became Filipino” and am treated with both the good and the bad. I happen to be a bit more patient with the bad parts since I value the good parts, but I can see how it would be a turn-off for others. Perhaps those Germans weren’t yet prepared to “become Filipino,” as I have become. I can catch chickens, climb coconut trees, knock back beers while grilling fish/meat, just like any other Pinoy guy, as well as put up with BS “favors,” lol.
Sometimes there is a definite “look at me” energy going on… Elites tend to look down on the masa doing that to others, especially foreigners, but one could say the elites do it in their own way of wanting to be seen as (superficially) equal to anyone (without the hard work).
Another way I’ve come to look at this “look at me” energy of wanting to be acknowledged is that it is a very human thing to do, even if Filipinos can be a bit excessive at doing it sometimes. If one has patience, it can be endearing. Filipino culture is very expressive and sharing, but it might get itself into trouble when it cannot “read the room.”
I saw a chart today of social welfare as a portion of the state for France, the UK, and various Soviet Bloc countries back then, and wow, I knew the French had a massive social welfare program but did not know it far exceeds the “socialist” USSR. Then there’s the French ultracrepidarian tendency to opine on everything with maximum confidence, even if they are not familiar with the subject. Feelings of inferiority due to losing the French colonial empire also plays a lot into the French sentiment. The French have strong feelings towards their traditional rivals the Germans for “going along with” so-called American “dominance,” though I suspect Germans see things differently. The French have never forgiven the US for forcing them to let go of (most) of the French colonial possessions after WWII. They definitely did not take it graciously like the British did when the UK let go of the “empire on which the sun never sets.”
This is just an Austronesian cultural trait, which can be seen in the current Indonesian anger towards (fake) Singaporean slights, which I will continue writing about in reply to CV in the other article. I haven’t thought about a way this trait can be re-directed towards a positive direction yet…
I have read some of those (US) reviews, and also reviews on a German parent forum warning other parents to use judgement due to the Manananggal. There was also a German review where parents asked their teenage kids how young the minimum age should be to see the movie (kids below 12 and from 6 years old need to go with parents) and the opinions were pretty divided, some said 10 and above, some said they would take their 8 year old sister along without issues.
German language movie reviewers for the most part wrote that the movie had no speed limits especially in the middle part. Maybe 10-20% of German language reviews were somewhat positive and had understood the story to some extent, even as some of them had clearly gotten parts of the story wrong.
they often are even overconfident of their room reading in non-Filipino contexts, too often thinking things work the same everywhere.
the directors did see the coming of age story (teenage friends on their way to college) as Filipino-coded yet universal, guess something was lacking for that..
I have long held the opinion that Philippine literature has a similar issue, making it lack true world authors and world novels.
If one reads “Bumi Manusia” of Indonesian author Pramoedya Ananta Tur (I read the German translation) it is universal yet VERY Indonesian.
Similar for Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “Hundred Years of Solitude” set in Colombia, and I guess Orhan Pamuk’s stuff is similar in character for Istanbul.
Ninotchka Rosca (State of War) and Miguel Syjuco (Ilustrado) come close to that standard, but (sorry Ninotchka!) something is missing..
..because both novels did get SOME interest abroad (including German translations) but did NOT reach the truly global league – sadly.
It would probably be true that every American knows at least one Filipino-American, even in very racially homogenous US states.
So I sometimes wonder why Pinoy culture hasn’t broken through despite Filipino-Americans having the third-longest footprint in the US (after Chinese-Americans and Japanese-Americans) of about 125 years.
It might be because aside from the few Fil-Ams that have broken through musically, most Fil-Ams are sort of in the background despite being over-represented in the bureaucracy and creative areas.
Btw, entertainers can be “singular,” so a Fil-Am breaking into pop music doesn’t necessarily translate into a broader cultural breakout. Since the musician’s fame is built around the entertainer themselves and not the culture more broadly. There are other Fil-Ams who are in pro-level sports, but those tend to adopt their White or Black identity instead. There is a rising Fil-Am politician who I follow, who is half-Aeta; he was very enthusiastic about his Philippines roots early in his career but seems to have adopted more his Black identity as it didn’t seem he got much love from fellow Pinoys.
In terms of cultural dominance of Asian-American Pacific Islander groups, traditionally it has been Chinese and Japanese, who were here “first;” nowadays cultural dominance has been Korean, followed closely by Vietnamese, both groups which only started arriving in the 1950s and 1970s.
Probably, building broad cultural power is more effective than pinning hopes on a handful of megastars. Apparently, there are trendy phở noodles and bánh mì shops all over Metro Manila nowadays. Even in “the sticks” like Zamboanga, when I visited last year, I was shocked to find more than one bánh mì shop. Back when I first visited the Philippines in 1998, there was only one phở restaurant in Makati (the chain was originally from Los Angeles-Orange County) outside of Vietville in Palawan. Back in the US, one can find every ethnic group patronizing Vietnamese restaurants, but only Pinoys patronizing Filipino restaurants that are not Jollibee…
“Back in the US, one can find every ethnic group patronizing Vietnamese restaurants, but only Pinoys patronizing Filipino restaurants that are not Jollibee.”
I’d like to see statistics backing that up. I’d guess it depends on where the restaurant is, Union City or Garden Grove. Is Vietnamese cuisine globally more popular than Filipino cuisine? I have no idea and don’t know what the point is. Filipinos are mayors and (were) presidential chefs and perform on Broadway and captain military ships and coach the NBA. Iranians run the gas stations, Cambodians the donut shops, Filipinos the hospitals and ocean craft, and we ought to thank all of them and appreciate the roles they play wherever and however they want.
My comment is about Americans who are NOT of the same ethnic background as the eatery patronizing eateries. For example, non-Filipinos regularly patronizing Filipino restaurants. I’m not talking about ethnic groups patronizing their own ethnic eateries in their own ethnic enclaves. But of course, in a Fil-Am dominated place such as Union City, Daly City, Cerritos in California there would be many Filipino restaurants… which are patronized by Pinoys, but not regularly by non-Pinoys. That is not true with Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, and other ethnic cuisines where ethnic outsiders often eat there.
My point is that cuisine is one of the primary vehicles of spreading culture. Whereas in your examples of a handful of mayors, presidential chefs (who no one knows about), another face in the military, or stage play actors in non-major roles, those do not drive cultural footprint. Those are singular and to the person. Of course their roles are appreciated, and the American bureaucracy is heavily staffed with Black Americans and Asian Americans (including a lot of Fil-Ams), but that doesn’t spread culture.
Irineo has commented occasionally about this same pattern in Germany, and I have observed it in Canada, the UK, Australia, so it’s not something limited to a localized area of Southern California.
I think we should not conflate societal contribution with cultural contribution. Both exist independently. Both can sometimes converge then diverge.
As for statistics, I shared this before a long while back when LCPL_X was asking about it, but YouGov (UK digital marketing firm) and ChefsPencil (popular chef-run restaurant industry blog) both did studies around 2020. YouGov ran a study across 24 countries, while ChefsPencil parsed Google Search Trends analytics.
YouGov 24 Country Study on the World’s Most Popular Cuisines
ChefsPencil Analytical Report of Google Search Trends Data
My comment is not a knock on Filipino cuisine, which I like to eat and include in my cooking rotation. Every week I plan my cooking around a different country’s cuisine, to reflect on my previous travels to those countries. It’s not a knock on the “tastiness” of Filipino cuisine, though Filipino food can be too fried, too brown, too sweet, too salty, too sour for my taste sometimes.
There are many reasons why Filipino cuisine never took off in the US or generally in the world, and I daresay none has to do with the actual taste (too much seasoning can be reduced without impacting the essential elements of a cuisine). The reason why Filipino food never took off is a combination of Pinoy restaurants catering mainly to Pinoys (service expectation vs price) and how the food itself is presented (often without garnish, too brown, not much effort to make the food visually appealing).
All these things can be fixed. Indonesian and Malaysian food is culinarily similar in ingredients, cooking method, and flavor profile, and as you can see in both studies, Indonesian and Malaysian food are much more popular with non-Indonesians and non-Malaysians while Filipino food falls far below. The Indonesian and Malaysian restaurants I have been to in the US and in their countries put more effort in garnish, presentation, and service.
Yes, well, restaurant owners can figure that out if they want. All I know is my wife sets out endless arrays of dishes that are stunningly flavorful and I eat healthier than I ever have in my life.
Actually the Philippine restaurants that cater to the rich and the affluent have service and consistency that’s just fine. The local eateries often are not consistent and have service that sometimes treats the buying customer as a burden more than a patron. I experience that a lot at karenderyas if they thought I’m a (Chinese-) Filipino, and notice Filipino friends are treated that way too. In the Philippines I do most of my own cooking, and prefer to eat “at home” (friends’ homes) too.
Yes, customer service is not a hallmark of Filipino retail. Every interaction seems to be a power statement.
The power play happens in reverse too, but only within the community. Sadly this behavior follows overseas well.
A while back I was at Costco and a Filipina customer (~70s) rather viciously in Tagalog chewed out the Costco Filipina worker (~20s), causing a scene and throwing products on the ground at the worker (but not physically hitting the worker). All because the worker wasn’t acting subserviently enough. I had to intervene, after which the older lady code-switched immediately to English. When the warehouse assistant manager arrived and said the lady would be banned for abusive behavior if it continued, she started playing the elderly victim card. I figure the older lady is a Third Republic/Martial Law migrant from her excellent (but accented) English while the younger girl is probably 2nd or 3rd generation Fil-Am. Many of my Fil-Am friends don’t like to associate themselves with the broader community and keep to themselves and their families.
Old is one of the power levers. And a US retail clerk would not have the same power “agency” as a Filipino retail clerk would have.
“My point is that cuisine is one of the primary vehicles of spreading culture.” Okay, that seems to fit with my sense that Filipino cuisines are not well known or distinctively different from top cuisines elsewhere. The tourism effort to my knowledge has not promoted foods as a mainstream attraction.
Older article, but this Global Thai program by Thailand (started 2002) is still available ongoing and was very effective in spreading Thai culture through gastrodiplomacy:
https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-surprising-reason-that-there-are-so-many-thai-restaurants-in-america/
Around the time you moved to the Philippines there weren’t many Thai restaurants in the US. Today there are many, often with the Global Thai accreditation on their restaurant walls.
Filipino food is good. Especially some regional cuisines which I’m fond of. The heavy use of seasonings, vinegar, salt, and sugar reflects the indigenous cuisine which did not have refrigeration in the past. For example, salt, sugar, and vinegar allows food to last longer without refrigeration, but that isn’t so necessary nowadays or in the West. Indonesian and Malaysian food adapted and started to break through in the West. Filipino food is a bit resistant to changing, despite having a rich history of adaptation… my guess is that the resistance to adaptation is a relatively recent thing that rose with nationalism in the last century plus. If Filipino cuisine adapts, it probably will become more popular with non-Filipinos.
The tourism campaign is fine. I’d see that as a different leg of cultural promotion.
I didn’t follow exactly when Thai restaurants started to spread in Germany, though my stomach tells me it was in the 1990s and somehow connected to Thai women marrying Germans (and Germans vacationing in Thailand, some even moving there for some years or permanently), actually I recall a Thai eatery in Frankfurt I went to with Philippine Honorary Consulate employees when I did some computer work for them back in the 1990s, it was what would be called “lutong bahay” in the Philippines, just one dish every day, office workers got it for an affordable price and quickly. In the 1980s Asian food in Germany was predominantly Chinese, but very Germanized Chinese cuisine, Japanese mostly in Düsseldorf as the place where the Japanese were concentrated in. Vietnamese food had its start in Berlin (former “socialist brother country” workers, so it seems more on Hanoi cuisine) and Munich (traditionally the refugee place, so apparently more on Saigon cuisine) – the 1990s trendy but still there “Monsieur Voung” in East Berlin (60s styled with a youth foto of the boss and women dressed like my titas before) with its two dishes of the day and the more traditional (forgot the name) Munich restaurant once owned by the former Viva moderator Mihn Kai Phan-Ti (Viva was a 1990s German answer to MTV and the first place on German TV with a lot of non-German origin moderators) – but now Vietnamese restaurants are everywhere, probably more than the Thai ones and definitely more than the old school neighborhood Chinese restaurants.
there is AFAIK exactly one restaurant with each cuisine in Munich. Filipino restaurants were actually there earlier but failed because they gave off the vibe of tambayans for the restaurant owner’s tropa (my impression) and making people feel out of place doesn’t keep them as customers. The one Indonesian restaurant also has the vibe of being a place for regulars who know the staff and the owner and often each other (with women who look like Pinay Marites titas often sitting outside in summer) but they don’t give a vibe of making “strangers” uncomfortable, again my feeling..
..there was a wave of somewhat better Philippine restaurants in Berlin in the noughties and 2010s (modern concepts, so neither glorified carinderias, way more expensive but slower than Thais and Chinese, or glorified karaoke joints) but it seems they didn’t survive the pandemic. I have been told that there is a great Pinoy restaurant scene in London by now, by quite reliable and NOT Pinoy pride biased sources. A Dutch vlogger is documenting the Pinoy food scene in Continental Europe, though he also was at a London Pinoy restaurant aside from an Amsterdam one.
I was actually surprised to see Filipino food at the lower end of the Top 20 list whose link you shared. Maybe the food sold at “Pinoy Foodfests” or classic Pinoy “summer festivals” or “Barrio Fiestas” (like in London) or sometimes hitching on street food festivals or flea markets (like one Pinay in Munich) contributes to that growing reputation, not just the still few restos..
They did somehow include the Michelin stars for Filipino restaurants in the Philippines in that program. What they could copy from the Thais is something I read when there was the “streetfood issue” with BINI – the Thais seem to have a program to upgrade and promote their street food in such a way that it is guaranteed and perceived as clean by foreign tourists. Prioritizing Michelin echoes the Imeldific tourist promotion of old a bit, even if that cringe campaign of the 1970s wasn’t entirely bad.
They also have both big PPop groups on board as Tourism Ambassadors now, so far they have avoided the Imeldific political cooptation of parts of OPM in the 1970s (Hajji Alejandro, Nora Aunor etc.) which is good. A lot of Embassies and Consulates abroad had screenings of Forgotten Island BTW or at least promoted it on their social media, though probably the two major PPop fandoms (both groups have songs on the OST in addition to Lea Salonga, HER, Katseye Sophia as well as Carl Angelo / Ruby Ibarra’s “Salbahe Ako” which to me stands out) were more involved in that aspect.
That there are cross-promotions is natural: Jolibee co-sponsoring Forgotten Island in US, UK and the Philippines, Philippine Airlines using the “Coachella mix” of BINI’s biggest hit “Pantropiko” (250M Spotify streams, 125M Youtube views) in their promotion (and I guess giving BINI and crew at least discounts for their recent North America tour in return) and more. The small version of that is the Pinoy food catering and the Pinoy food store here in Munich featured as sponsors of the recent concert of “Filipina Soul Queen” Jaya. That is definitely a better taste in the mouth than the weird stands of Megaworld and other condo developers at a Filipino late summer festival in Munich back in 2023. Well, in the 1980s it was insurance salesmen both Pinoy and German who liked to appear as sponsors during Filipino festivals, for Pinoy papers (I co-published one for a short while haha, IKR) in addition to the “usual suspects” like PAL and the oldest Filipino-German travel agency..
The global push of Thai cuisine was definitely in the 2000s onward with the Global Thai gastrodiplomacy campaign. Btw, Global Thai was PAIRED in conjunction with the Thai government tourism campaign, Amazing Thailand. Global Thai (gastrodiplomacy) and Amazing Thai (tourism initiative) are inextricably linked by design. Both campaigns are recognized to have been highly effective in raising Western awareness to Thailand and Thai culture. Other countries figured out how to strategically coordinate stuff in order to bring more tourism dollars (or euros), but also to prepare their country so the foreign visitor is not disappointed when they arrive. I know too many Americans (families) who were excited to visit the Philippines because of the “It’s More Fun in the Philippines” campaign or hearing positive stories from Fil-Am co-workers, then telling themselves “I won’t visit again” due to bad experiences (didn’t meet service expectations, getting scammed, high prices, inconvenient transport, etc.).
Yes. Most Filipino restaurants in the US seem to be essentially tambayans for the owner’s or owner’s husband’s friends. The food is also not cooked consistently due to the lutong bahay style.
Another problem is that marketing-wise, Pinoys don’t seem to understand that “you eat with your eyes first,” which is a proverb that exists in multiple cultures: the 1st Century Roman gourmand Apicius (“We eat with our eyes first.”); an unattributed but common Chinese proverb (“You eat first with your eyes, then your nose, then your mouth.”); a Japanese proverb (“Eating with the eyes.”) which influenced the rules of moritsuke (Japanese food arrangement); and more recently nouvelle cuisine critic and writer Alexander Cockburn in 1977 (“gastroporn stimulating visual hunger.”). Regardless of the actual taste, most Filipino cuisine is presented as what Americans call “a plate of brown” — visually unappealing and perhaps even visually disgusting.
Even the very rigid cuisine of Japan figured this out in the post-War evolution of sushi. Most US regions did not eat rice in the 1970s, and American regional cuisine with rice dishes had sauce. Even in California, with a large Japanese diaspora, while Californians were familiar with cooked Japanese food, most Americans were repulsed by sushi, which traditionally had rice on the outside, supposedly due to the unsauced rice grains reminding them of maggots. So Los Angeles Japanese sushi restaurants in Little Tokyo put the seaweed nori on the outside, creating the California roll. The California roll set off the Japanese culinary revolution in the US. And just like with Chinese-American or Italian-American cuisine, Japanese-American culinary innovations abroad also eventually became popular back home in Japan.
I’ve actually been eating Filipino food since Kindergarten, due to going to Catholic school with Fil-Am classmates. A lot of Americans in urban and suburban areas are also exposed to Filipino food, especially those whose parent(s) work in government bureaucracy (where a lot of Fil-Ams work). When my dad left the Army he ended up in government service so he had a lot of Fil-Am coworkers there too. But mostly, it was Chinese-Filipino food like lumpiang shanghai, pancit, siopao, lechon. I didn’t even have my first adobo until I was in my first year of high school despite having many Fil-Am classmates and visiting their homes. They just didn’t cook lutong bahay when visitors were over. There are also 4.4+ million Fil-Ams, the third largest Asian-American ethnicity, so I’m sure that drives some interest especially when they “marry out.”
Yes, this is an ongoing part of the Amazing Thai campaign. Though when I first visited Thailand, I think it was in 1996, I basically lived off of street food and roadside fruit stands. It was quite clean, even back then half a decade before the debut of Amazing Thai. I did not find the Philippines to be that clean 2 years later… The Philippines remains the only Southeast Asian country where I had food poisoning from street food, and I’d already been visiting the then-dirty roadside Mexican stands in Baja California down to Acapulco and Veracruz since elementary school due to proximity.
I’m still not convinced that BINI is actually popular outside of the Philippines or the Filipino diaspora. TBH when I informally poll the kids, very few even know who BINI is. For example, Kworb (Spotify Charts data) statistics point to ~80% of streams for Pantropiko originating from the Philippines, then the other ~20% coming from countries with OFW/diaspora, especially the Middle East. So I wonder how much of the supposed popularity of BINI, SB19, actually has to do with Filipinos in the Philippines having a song on repeat…
Kworb: Spotify Chart History — BINI Pantropiko
On YouTube Charts, which combined YouTube (video) and YouTube Music plays, BINI is all the way down on #93… in the Philippines… while SB19 doesn’t even break the Philippines YouTube Top 100…
YouTube Charts (Philippines)
I’m in favor of broader progress, rather than pinning hopes on the singular or the handful. Because if the artist or the famous person succeeded, they succeeded; the community might feel euphoria but how much did Manny Pacquiao (for example) improve the Philippines with his success?
hmm, if I look at the videos of Dutch vlogger “Kuya Joey” it seems most of the places he mentioned still lack that, even if they look clean, welcoming etc.:
https://www.youtube.com/@chefkuyajoey/videos
Food poisoning happens even in parties over there ever since. My father always warned me what not to eat (didn’t prevent me from eating fishballs on the way home from school but I guess I got immunity to that particular stand after a while) especially after I got typhoid fever at the age of nine.
Even his brother after him, my pretty colorful bisyoso uncle, was finicky about food and mentioned cholera just as much as my father did.
even if simple repeats are not counted by Spotify and Youtube, the PPop fandoms are known for having playlists to circumvent that and some allegedly loop them all day on their laptops.
though the brands that have them as sponsors in the Philippines would know they do reach at least certain demographics, even as SB19 is more niche and BINI more mainstream in the Philippines. That neither have significantly reached outside the diaspora bubble abroad is confirmed by how their world tours have done so far.
P.S. will be observing how the first Filipino Netflix original to go global simultaneously does https://x.com/beeyonceknight/status/2115726537194631510?a=DJJLN8tr9y62GY9lfP8 – Balaraw is a kind of live action but truly horror forgotten island type of story, wonder how this will do and who is behind it in the Philippines. Just keeping track of how the “Filipino global brand” keeps developing..
I had a quick look at a few of Kuya Joey’s YouTube videos and yes, I can see that. His YouTubes also seem tailored towards a Pinoy audience rather than an audience unfamiliar with Filipino culture, with the over-the-top “Pinoy is best” thumbnail captions. Therein is the problem I guess: In order to spread culture the ambassadors of culture need to take the cultural context then democratize, externalize, and universalize the culture — in other words, cultural diffusion. Rather than evangelizing Filipino culture, it seems people like Kuya Joey have joined the culture and consider themselves part of the in-group. Constantly forming new in-groups isn’t conducive to spreading anything… Interestingly it seems Kuya Joey has only visited the Philippines for about 4-5 years, compared to my nearly 30 years.
Personal hygiene and public sanitation isn’t a widespread practice in the Philippines outside of the educated classes. A few years back Duterte officials railed against two alledged Mainland Chinese tourists for letting their kids poop on the beach in Boracay, yet in Taguig City, the 5th richest city in Metro Manila and home of the shiny BGC, it is not uncommon to need to watch one’s step when walking to avoid piles of human feces in the side alleys (and not even in informal settlements).
I’ve watched street food vendors go to the CR, rinse their fingertips with water (remember, water is seen as a restorative purifier in Austronesian culture, such as expressed in ginhawa), then go back to making and serving food. I do like Filipino street food, especially pungko-pungko (meaning to “squat-squat” in Cebuano) in Cebu, but I stick with the fried and grilled stuff. An episode of food poisoning in the US would get a restaurant closed down by the health authorities. If we recall, there were numerous accounts of how Filipinos (from the elite to the masa) heavily resented the hygiene regime imposed during the 1902–1904 Cholera Epidemic.
P.S. I’ve thought about this a bunch and recognized a problem: Filipinos place a high value on hygiene and sanitation inside (at home), but outside is considered a collective responsibility (of others, of course).
I have read some online comments by the fandom that claim that by jumping/switching VPN endpoints, one can circumvent the play counter. But that would assume that the play counter is linked solely to the IP address. Most likely, the Spotify client itself is “fingerprinted” to the device, just like many other apps today, so jumping VPNs won’t work. While I’m sure some very dedicated fans might try circumvention to boost their idols, the more plausible reason might be that younger Millennial and Gen-Z Filipinos basically have Spotify playing constantly as a form of background/mood music, while perhaps not really paying close attention to the song being played from the playlist. This is another in-group behavior that self-validates and probably doesn’t actually help expand the culture.
It is cheap for Netflix to license Filipino media, while Philippine media companies earn money from licensing out their content. IIRC ABS-CBN was a pioneer on this Netflix partnership. Also, Netflix is super popular in the Philippines (like Spotify) with the younger generation who either work in OFW, BPO, or are supported by OFW, BPO. Spotify and Netflix bundles are aggressively promoted in mobile data load promos. Outside of the Philippines, it appears Netflix-sponsored Filipino content is watched concentrated in countries with a Filipino diaspora.
Looks like Balaraw was produced and directed by the studio Epicmedia Productions, which focuses on epic storytelling.
Netflix publishes a number of engagement and country-level ranking lists, which I used Claude to parse through: