Cheap Populace

I can still remember Rico Yan's death from a few years ago. Not that it held any special meaning to me, it's just that media has made it so sensationalized, and the mass lapped it all up. "Nagluluksa ang buong bansa" said Boy Abunda on the feed. I certainly wasn't. Sure I felt sadness for his untimely demise, but I wasn't mourning for him. He did not hold any special meaning to me, other than that he was a young actor.
This is what irks me. There are certain aspects of Filipino society that cheapens its identity as a nation. We are so immersed with misplaced pride, drunken with drama, and live on apathy, but to which we rabidly react if we find any manifest blurbs subtle or not against our downtrodden country. We, like I've previously pointed out on my other blog, are fame parasites. We feast on the scandals, we make it our own. We lose the ability to delineate reality from the telenovelas bombarded by our local networks. And so, their story becomes our story. In the end, we wallow in self pity, because we feel that others are unjust.
The now defunct Wowowee showcases such examples of ludicrous showmanship of an ordinary Pinoy. Funny, that these foolhardy folks never had any second thoughts in telling the story of their lives, which for the most part are about suffering, always, always with tears in their eyes when they stand in front of the camera, that whatever they say is almost close to your staple telenovela its sickening. I've never had any qualms in telling everyone I know about the abhorrence I feel whenever the subject of wowowee came up. It's just media profiteering, filled with vulgarisms and so-so performances.
Enter the movies, there are so few, few which you'd consider as original, or at least thought provoking. Indie films are sadly, not as Indie films should be. They are porn in disguise. Mainstream movies are all about your sappy love stories it borders monotony. Gahd, I'm thankful of foreign films that seem to fill the gap for the need for quality films, which I'm sure cannot be appreciated by the masses. I hate to mention it, but pinoy films are vacuous and non-cerebral at the most. Its always your run of the mill pa tweetums movies that make me gag at best. Storylines that are recycled over and over, everything falls into predictability, that all of which changes are the title, and the names in the story.
I miss the old films, those which are the masterpieces of Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal and the likes. They were truly socially relevant. But then again, Pinoys of that generation haven't fallen into apathy, and they faced the harsh realities of everyday life with might and great forbearance. Not this generation. We are inundated with unprecedented corruption, year after year, our core values eroded, and all that is left is a numbed society drugging itself with make believe puke worthy love stories and certified copycat ideas (imortal-makes me wince bigtime). Where do we go from here?
The music, oh, we still have some original pinoy music. BUT, (a very big but), we are also saturated with rehash, remake, (whatever you'd like to call it) of old foreign songs, that are either binibirit, or were popular 2 or 3 decades ago. What's with that?
(will continue-in other words, abangan ang susunod na kabanata...hahaha, I miss that sitcom)