(Para sa isyung ini, buot kong ihiras an sarong artikulo na binasa ko sa pirang estudyante tanganing mahiling an kusog kan telebisyon asin an kapangyarihan kan arte.)

        Unlike an artwork (visual arts, literature, theater, etc) that encourages you to think and reflect, television and other forms of Philippine mass media popularized by the growing consumerist culture encourage many people to receive and be passive consumers of their deliverable goods and virtual services. Our popular mass media, in all its glory has generated this massive phenomenon that is known as cultural illiteracy, a mentality not only capable of comprehending a book but also incapable of responding with imagination to painting, dance, architecture, poetry and all other forms of cultural experience (Highwater, 1994). It has been a massive form of escapism for many of us that alianates us is so many ways. It is a politically devastating condition. It isolates not only from the way we understand ourselves but also in terms of how we communicate with one another: No other time in our history when there are more people whose language (mode of communication) dramatically change overnight. One might ask: how this ‘texting’ phenomenon has changed the vocabulary and lexicons of the present, when the issue of a national language stir confusion and apathy among many?

        The lack of creative power that may visualize and articulate any sense of hope has given birth to a growing number of emotionally illiterate persons who can be highly educated and professionally skilled, motivated by serious political aspirations and moral purpose. However, cold as they are, they lack the power to imagine. These people take their political and religious dogmas when face with the call to perform an act of inventiveness that will allow them to make creative judgments and decisions. There are no more dangerous people on earth than those who do not understand the mythic and imaginary bases of their strongly held beliefs ramified through the years. A look at our politicians both in the opposition or administration— one will see that there is almost no grasp of imagination in the political arena. They believe that arts is the luxury of the disempowered though if there is another art that they will support so as to give them the cultured image necessary for their political careers, this art is purportedly disenfranchised and belongs to aristocracy and elitism. This group of people can watch an Italian opera, a Josh Groban concert, attend to film festivals, cast their bid to have the 18th century painting and decorate their condominiums and subdivision homes with these works of art, including some exotic handicrafts made by a minority colored group, they can also parade themselves with copies of the latest novels to hit the bestsellers’ list abroad.

        Now in case of the greater majority who seems to live their lives as if there is one big camera out there that sees us all and we are all just waiting for our one big break before stardom, the closest representation attached to arts and is understood and widely accepted by many is the term ‘artista’ that is a categorical reference to their favorite show biz personalities. In recent years, the term has evolved to refer even to news anchors, beauty queens, sports heroes and now even a once-in- a-life- time appearance on a television makes one of these fancied personalities. An ‘extra’ can make it to stardom. These media personalities whose faces occupy every corner of our landscape both physical and imagined made the imagination of the people bounded and hapless.

        With the appropriation of two virtual worlds, we can hardly distinguish which one is showbiz and which is politics. The election of a movie star as president in 1998 seems at one point, a way of ‘artistic’ retaliations by the majority to the upper class member of the society. But history took another course when the showbiz son was ousted in a popular revolt in 2001, convicted after six years of house arrest and now pardoned. Nonetheless, this man continues to simulate images of the glory that was lost, once promised by the alluring world of showbiz. Now, most politicians, parasites as they are, swamped in both worlds of fleeting images that easily prey the mass who remains as captives of mass media that has become a new religion for many. While the recent nation election showed some positive results in the non-winning of famous movie actors, most of us are still hooked up with televisions that has dramatically change our lives. Randy David laments this kind of life controlled by televisions, he wrote: ‘What becomes of life when its truth has to be validated by television? We would be emoting our feelings in an effort to persuade ourselves they are real. Our interactions would be sound bites that mock our deepest sentiments. We would be role-playing.’

        This culturally illiteracy may not just be the effect of our overexposure to televisions and to worlds that it presents to us. However, this gadget and the many technological advancements that we have, have also limped our capacity for imagination. Imagination is not contained in a powered box alone, imagination can also be (is) a political force that without which this world will just become a cacophony of cold images and shots as seen in our television screens. Not that I deny the help of this gadget, I myself have one. But the advent of televisions in our lives has gradually eroded our way of thinking, our way of viewing the world. While it made us feel closer to the out-there-reality, it has also transformed our imagination into autotypes. Information has become an idle gossip, news programs seem to dictate public consensus, political cause becomes a sort of a Baltimore catechism and the profound feeling of human emotions has been reduced to trivial and recycled melodramas, an emotional artifice. An artwork comes with an artist, a poem with a poet, whom we can identify, but with television, there is no deliveryman, we can hardly identify to recognize all these goods left at our doorsteps.It is ‘soul-less.’