How do we break the Hollywood addiction?
While debates about plummeting box-office numbers for local cinema usually focus on the practical factors—high ticket prices, low production budgets, and limited marketing—Kidlat Tahimik sees these merely as symptoms. And if we’re to address this issue, he says, we first have to identify the root cause: colonial mentality.
The National Artist for Film quotes the late writer and historian Carmen Guerrero Nakpil, who once said that Filipinos “lived three centuries in convent and 50 years in Hollywood.”
“Talagang we’re colonized. Ang lakas ng epekto ng Hollywood, particularly on us,” Tahimik tells Lifestyle Inquirer on the sidelines of the ASEAN Film and Television Summit, held in Manila last August.
People are willing to spend, but…
Of course, industry realities like ticket prices do affect people’s behavior. If you have to spend, say, P500 to see the latest “Spider-Man” flick, while one of Tahimik’s films costs half as much, that could make some difference, he says.
But despite all the talk about the law of supply and demand and calls for lower ticket prices, the “main block is still within,” he says. Filipinos are willing to spend. The fact that “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” grossed more than P1 billion in just 12 days in the Philippines shows that.
“There’s a public who wants to buy tickets, pero meron na silang daloy and that’s toward Hollywood,” Tahimik says. “Siguro you get a big thrill out of it, or you believe sulit ang pera mo.”
Still, Tahimik says audiences need to ask themselves why they don’t give Filipino films a chance. The thing is, many of us have gotten addicted to a “diet of Hollywood junk,” he says—“I don’t know if it’s a good metaphor or not”—to the point that even when local works that may be better suited to our sensibilities exist, “niluluwa natin.”
“We should be aware that we’re so infatuated sa Hollywood films,” he says. “I’m not saying they’re bad, but I’m just saying nasanay tayo sa language na hindi na natin ma-appreciate ‘yong language ng local films natin.”
‘Filipino and kapwa eyes’
So great is the influence that it can even seep into how Filipinos depict their own heroes. Lapu-Lapu, for instance, can be rendered as a “muscle-bound” figure striking a “sensational pose of a Hollywood superhero.” Sometimes, they can even have “Western features reminiscent of Hollywood stars.”
“These are unconscious artistic touches,” he points out.
In contrast, Tahimik cites the series “Maria Clara at Ibarra” as an example of looking at Filipino heroes through “Filipino and kapwa eyes.” He had been enjoying it in his hometown of Baguio before coming down to Manila for the summit, and he made sure to watch it with his grandkids, whom he says have been getting used to American sitcoms like “Friends” and “Community.”
“I was explaining to them that the show has a very strong kapwa orientation,” he says of the historical fantasy series directed by Zig Dulay and starring Barbie Forteza and Dennis Trillo. “I enjoy watching something slower-paced that indulges in our kapwa values—pagiging makapwa sa pobre, sa leper, including Ibarra as the voice of Rizal.”
The biggest ‘influencers’
How do we teach people to see Filipino stories this way? Tahimik believes that teachers—whom he describes as among the biggest “influencers of elementary and high school students”—can play a crucial role in helping young audiences appreciate Filipino films.
But teachers, he points out, aren’t immune to the same conditioning. They, too, may have become accustomed to the “Hollywood MSG” many of us are hooked on. And if they haven’t learned to appreciate Filipino or independent cinema themselves, how can they convince their students to give it a chance?
Case in point, he cites the Cinematheque Baguio of the Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP), which closed in 2017 mainly due to low audience turnout. Baguio is home to five major universities, Tahimik points out, and yet the venue still struggled to attract students—partly because “they stick to their own campuses” and felt “alienated from local films.”
The teachers themselves, he adds, didn’t encourage students to go to the Cinematheque.
“Kasi siguro hindi pa sila convinced na ‘yong ipapapanood ko na non-Hollywood film ay of a certain quality or certain relevance to you,” he says. “The teachers will have to be convinced, too, na okay, maski iba ang lasa nitong iko-consume niyo na film, magugustuhan niyo ‘to if you look at it from different eyes.”
Baby steps
The FDCP realizes as much. In fact, it has begun working with the Department of Education to develop a film curriculum for junior and senior high school. Recognizing that teachers at this level also need support, the organization holds a film education convention and runs workshops on how to teach film.
It has also created teaching modules for 12 films on FDCP’s official streaming platform, JuanFlix, giving teachers the tools to bring the films into the classroom and teach them more effectively.
“We bang on their (DepEd) doors,” FDCP chair Jose Javier Reyes says.
A similar, more developed approach is already in place in Korea. Kwon Tae-un, head of international relations at the Korean Film Council and the Korean representative at the summit, cited initiatives that include K-12 programs, textbooks and coursework for teachers, and partnerships with local cinemas to bring students to theaters.
However, the effort has to go beyond film education, Reyes stresses.
“You have to make the Filipino proud of being Filipino,” he points out. “That goes down to basic education. Film is only one manifestation. We have to respect our national integrity, and it’s not only the responsibility of the film teacher. It goes down to the kindergarten and in the home.”
Reyes acknowledges that these are still “baby steps,” but the effort is a start.
Indeed, breaking that “Hollywood addiction,” Tahimik says, will be a long process. “We have to educate ourselves, educate our teachers who teach the youth.”
