PREFACE

Welcome to Philippine popular culture. This module is made to cater to your needs. The
purpose of this module is to help you while you are studying at home. This also serves to open
opportunities for you to learn new things about this subject.

The entire course will deal on the following:

1. Understand the historico-spatial condition and phenomenon of Philippine

Modernity.
2. Investigate how Philippine culture is operational, circulated, re-produced,
consumed and instrumentalized by the recurring social order.
3. Value the importance of national life’s sphere in social activities and lived
experience economy.

How the Module is Organized

Week Course outcomes Topics

1-2 Module 1 A Historical Inquiry of Philippine

Popular Culture
3-5 Module 2 Framing the Popular

6-8 Module 3 The political-economy of media

9 MIDTERM EXAMINATION

10-13 Module 4 Socio-Political Aspect

14-17 Module 5 Critiques and Fissure in the Culture

of Popular Culture
18 FINAL EXAMINATION

How to use this Module

As the government limits our face-to-face

interaction and prohibit mass gatherings, distance learning is a major component of
learning delivery for this school year. Distance learning means lessons will be delivered
outside the traditional face-to-face setup as the country deals with this pandemic.
Learning is in the form of individualized instruction that allow you to use self-
learning modules (SLMs). Where you can actively construct you own knowledge
through the experiences you will gain in reading and answering this learning modules.
To finish this course and be able to gain all the competencies and skills expected
to demonstrate the learning outcomes as stated in this course, you should take time to
read everything written in the module, actively and conscientiously answer all the
exercises.

PHILIPPINE POP CULTURE MODULE 1

TO THE LEARNERS:

This module has icons that you should be familiar with as you work through the entire
modules of this subject.

What is this In this part you will know the contents of this module.
module all
about

This part of the module will tell you what are the
What will you learning competencies that you need to achieve.
learn from this
module

This is short activity or review of the previous lesson

Let’s See What that aims to help you bridge the current to the past
You Already lesson.
Know

In this part the new lesson will be introduced to you

Let’s Try This through various activities such as stories, songs,
poems, motivational questions or situations.

In this part the new lesson will be discussed. The

Let’s Learn concepts will help you understand the new concepts
and skills.

This part contains activities and questions that can

What Can You help you translate theoretical learnings to practical
Do application.

This part contains questions and activities that aims to

Let’s See What process the lessons that you learned in this module.
You Have This involves activities and exercises that aims to
Learned enhance your understanding and skills related on the
topic at hand

This part contains questions and activities that aims to

What Have You assess and measure the level of learning of the target
Learned? competencies.

At the end of the module, a glossary of terms is

Glossary prepared for you to serve as your guide on the
different concepts and terms found in the module.

References At the end of the module, references are provided.

PHILIPPINE POP CULTURE MODULE 1

Module 1
Introduction to Philippine
Popular Culture

What is this module all about?

This module was designed and written with you in mind. It is here to help you
better understand the importance of Philippine Pop Culture by walking you through
discovering your strengths and weakness, your talents and skills. As a bonus, you will
be given fun enrichment activities. Be careful in answering the exercises and tasks by
carefully reading every given instruction. Let’s begin!

What Will You Learn From This Module?

After going through this module, you are expected to:

1.1 Understand the History of Philippine Pop Culture.
1.2 Identify the difference of Nationalist Culture, Folk Culture and Philippine Pop
Culture
1.3 Value the importance of preserving the History of Philippine Popular Culture

The first part of your module will not

only test your prior knowledge but will
also introduce you to the next lesson.
Happy learning!

Let’s See What You Already Know

Warm up Activity : Timeline
Direction: The timeline you will be creating is to show the chronological order of the
colonization of foreign countries in the Philippines.

PHILIPPINE POP CULTURE MODULE 1

 Year Country

Activity 1: REVIEW WRITING

Direction: Write a short essay about “The

Importance of Preservation of the History
of the Philippines?”

Congratulations for completing the

first activities. Did you enjoy them?

Now you will be learning A Historical Inquiry of Philippine Pop Culture.

Study the inputs given and be ready to complete different activities that
will test your knowledge and understanding as you go through the lesson.

Let’s Learn
Lecturette

Introduction to Philippine Pop Culture

"Building a culture has to start with a foundation, and that foundation must necessarily
be the culture of the Filipino people if this could be separated with the encrustations
grown on it by colonial rule."

Popular culture, is different from the folk culture and nationalist culture of the
Filipinos. Folk culture is the way of living in a place in a specific time and portrays the
practices of a certain people, and on how they cope to survive with nature. Nationalist
culture is the culture created through colonial resistance with the collective of a people
on a given place and time. These two are different from popular culture which can be
traced even in the period of Hispanization of the Philippines.

Popular culture in the Philippines was created and used by the Spaniards to the
native Filipinos or Indios via plays and literature to get the heart of the natives and win

PHILIPPINE POP CULTURE MODULE 1

it. The colonial origins of popular culture found in the Philippines can be traced by
looking at salient developments in Philippine literature.

The first permanent Spanish settlement began replacing the native culture with a
Christian and European tradition. The children of the native elite under the tutelage of
missionaries became a core group of intelligentsia called 'ladinos', as they became
instrumental "in bringing into the vernacular, literary forms that were to be vehicles for
the "pacification" of the natives". Forms of popular theatre and literature such as "the
pasyon, sinakulo, and korido ensured the acceptance and spread of Christianity, and
the komedya and awit did the same for the monarchy." Popular culture as introduced
by the Spanish was "popular" to the extent that it was a "watering-down of Spanish-
European culture for the purpose of winning the general populace over to the 'ideology'
of the colonial regime." Popular culture at the time was created by colonial authorities,
with the aid of the local intelligentsia, to promote the interests of the Church and the
State.

However, once the native intelligentsia saw the effects of popular culture and
knew how to work its way as propaganda, they soon used the Spanish weapon against
them. In the 19th century, through the Propaganda movement, the native intelligentsia
used the same forms of popular culture to "undermine the power of the abusive friars
and rally the populace to put an end to colonial rule" one example is the work of Marcelo
H. del Pilar when he soon used prayers such as the 'Aba, Ginoong Maria' and 'Ama
Namin' in a sort of parody to strike against the abusive Spanish Friars.

The advent of American colonialism brought, the properly so-called, popular

culture to the Philippines. The liberal policy regarding the printing press, soon through
radio, television and film, increased the circulation of of popular culture forms. Not only
through these forms but also in new media then, such as films. Hollywood films had a
near-monopoly in the Philippine market especially in the absence of European movies
due to World War I.

Early on, the local intelligentsia has the same apprehensions over mass media
as they called it commercialisation, or vulgarisation of art. According to Lumbera, the
local intelligentsia noticed that "Popular literature as a commodity intended for a mass
market was seen to pose a threat to serious artistic work, because the writers
accommodated his art to the demands of the publishers and editors who were more
interested in sales rather than aesthetics." More so, "...popular culture is not created by
the populace... rather, it is culture created either by the ruling elite or by members of the
intelligentsia in the employ of that elite, for the consumption of the populace."; it is
"....'packaged' entertainment or art intended for the profit of rulers, be they colonial
administrators or native bureaucrats and businessmen."

"Popular culture is power, and whoever wields it to manipulate minds is likely to

find its literary and technological machinery turned against him when the minds it has
manipulated discover its potency as a political weapon."

Let’s See What You Have Learned

PHILIPPINE POP CULTURE MODULE 1

 This evaluation will measure your knowledge on the different principle of
training and its benefits.
1. How did the Spaniards conquer the heart of the native Filipinos?
2. What are the changes/effect of popular culture after the colonization of
Spaniards?
3. How did the Americans colonize the culture of the Philippines?

What Have You Learned?

Activity 3: Journal Writing
Share your reflection after reading the history of Philippine
Popular Culture. “What if Spaniards never came to
Philippines?”

Glossary of Terms
Elite- a select group that is superior in terms of ability or qualities to the rest of a
group or society.
Friars- a member of any certain religious
Tutelage- authority over someone or something; guardship
Vernacular- a language or dialect spoken by the ordinary people in a particular
country or region

Reference

Danesi,M.(2015).Popularculture:Introductoryperspectives(3rded.).London:Rowman&Littlefield

Garchitorena, A. Pop Culture and the Rise of social Media in the Philippines pdf file

Griffin,M.(2012).Afirstlookatcommunicationtheory(8thed.).NewYork:McGraw-Hill

Fedorak,S.A.(2009).PopCulture:Thecultureofeverydaylife.Toronto:UniversityofTorontoPress

Fernandez, D. G. (1981). Philippine Popular Culture: Dimensions and Directions The State of Research in
Philippine Popular Culture. Philippine Studies, 29(1), 26–44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/42632570

Fernandez,D.G.
(2002).Masscultureandculturalpolicy:ThePhilippineexperience.Budhi,5(36.1).RetrievedSeptember19,202
0,fromhttps://journals.ateneo.edu/ojs/index.php/budhi/article/view/59/591

Khan.R.E.(2015).Mediaandinformationliteracyhandbook.Mandaluyong:AnvilPublishing

PHILIPPINE POP CULTURE MODULE 1