If youre anything like me, and I hope you are not, the following experience happens almost every

time you have a quiz in Sir Tenorios Fil class: Bonus question number one, he says in a clear voice. Youm know you have to nail these bonus questions because judging by the way you answered the quizwith a lot of numbers left blankyoure going to need them. You eagerly wait for his next words to salvage your score and you think, Everyone says his bonus questions are easy. Im so going to pass this quiz! Ano ang bagong teleserye ng ABS na may tauhang mukhang tarsier? And this is the part where you groan in frustration and kiss that passing grade goodbye. I dont watch TV. To be specific, I dont watch Filipino TV shows. TV has always been for watching DVDs for me. I download and watch TV shows online and most of these are American. My siblings and I, along with our cousins, grew up watching anime and cartoons on Betamax instead of the educational Filipino TV programs they show on mornings. Only my lolas and our house helper love watching these highly predictable romance shows. Cable TV was like a magical doorway when we had it and it unlocked an infinite number of channels and being that most of these are American, I grow accustomed to them and preferred them over Filipino shows. A usual complain I have on the dinner table when I talk to my parents is, Why dont [ABS-CBN and GMA] make shows like that here in the Philippines? How come we dont have shows with a complicated storyline and a very unpredictable ending like the sci-fi thriller, Lost? Why dont we have shows that have a good combination of drama, horror and suspense like The Walking Dead? Sure, everyone loves a good romantic comedy but they dont make them like How I Met Your Mother. I admit that I think American shows are better than Filipino shows. But this can also be viewed in line with our social class. The accessibility of foreign shows depends on ones economic status and that is why we can regard these American shows as belonging to high culture. The majority of the nation probably doesnt watch the same shows I do and we could say that the main reason is their inability to access these. Local shows are more widespread and can be considered part of popular culture. However in my experience above, this difference between high and popular culture increases the gap between social classes. In a way, I felt alienated for not knowing that TV show and I can infer that other people feel the same way as well when I tell them about the shows I watch. In another hand, we can also see this phenomenon as colonial mentality. Colonial mentality, according to Constantino, as cited by Quimpo1, encompasses our subservient attitudes towards the colonial ruler as well as our predisposition towards aping Western ways. In short, we are pretending to be something we are not. Ordoez, also cited by Quimpo2, noted that colonial mentality is still eminent mass media of American and Western pop culture and our preference for stateside products among others.

Nathan Gilbert Quimpo. Colonial Name, Colonial Mentality and Ethnocentrism, KASAMA 18, No. 2 (2004), http://cpcabrisbane.org/Kasama/2004/V18n2/ColonialName4.htm 2 Quimpo

I think what allows colonial mentality to be embedded in Philippine society is that two social institutionseducation and governmentin our country were developed during the time of American colonization and were modeled after theirs. Another reason is globalization and social media. With the rise in technology, the world feels like a smaller place because we get to know more of cultures other than our own easily. We can communicate with people from other countries through the internet. Many Filipinos are able to migrate to other countries or work as OFWs. These help in making our cultures more similar because there is always a little exchange of culture going on. We all have our own preferences may it be regarding clothes, TV shows, music, gadgets and so on and we never question these things. We just accept them as they are but sometimes its good to think about the reasons why. Is it because we conform to the other members of our social class? Or is it because we put value in brands and labels? And more importantly, do these preferences prevent us from trying new things?