Noranians and Vilmanians:
Fandom, Fantasy, Rebellion and Resistance in the Philippines1
It is 1967. Maria, a household maid, is watching Tawag ng Tanghalan, (The Call to
the Stage), a Filipino version of “American Idol.” Tonight’s feature is a young girl with dark
brown skin --- every bit a village lass who made the long journey to Manila to compete in a
televised entertainment program. Though the money prize was small, the bigger prize was
instant fame, and with it, a string of movie and television offers to propel one’s career to
stardom. The winner of this particular show was a young teenager, 13 years old, named
Nora Aunor. She was born in a village where Maria comes from --- a fifth-class municipality
in the Philippines, known for little else except constant typhoons, rural poverty and migrant
workers.
Maria’s fellow maid, Teresa, prefers to watch a Vilma Santos movie in another
channel. In the movie, Vilma Santos portrays Ging, a girl of ten years old who sings in order
to support her crippled mother. It’s a big tearjerker of a movie for sure, and Teresa sobs as
she watches the young girl turns over her evening earnings to her immobile mother after a
long exhausting day of singing in the streets. In later years, Vilma Santos would capture a
massive audience of cinemagoers because of her versatility to portray a wide range of roles,
reflecting “the changing mores and values of the Filipino woman, giving a face to their plight
and struggles” through her portrayal of strong female roles.
Around these two actresses, a rather long-standing rivalry, albeit friendly, between
two fan clubs emerged: the Noranians and the Vilmanians ---- diehard fans like Teresa and
Maria who profess their dedication to these two Filipina women. Both are rural migrants
coming from impoverished backgrounds to work in the capital city and seek their fortunes
there, hoping the same luck will be visited upon them as those of their idols.
In this study, I discuss fandom as social critique.
I argue that fandom forms an
intrinsic part of popular culture (as opposed “official high culture”) because of its lack of
social legitimation and/or institutional support. Fan culture, according to John Fiske (1993)
is a “shadow cultural economy” in which a severe lack of cultural capital among the
disadvantaged limits their abilities to acquire high culture competencies --- those that are
1
Paper read at a conference on “Fandom and Fan Communities,” Manchester Harris College, Oxford University.
22-23 March 2013. Teresita Cruz-del Rosario is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for Asian Legal Studies at
the National University of Singapore
acquired through a cosmopolitan education, or through exposure to high culture sites such
as art galleries, theater and other similar cultural institutions.
In contrast, the shadow
cultural economy operate through the media of film and television, both venues that are
accessible to the poor, and through which they are able to participate in social life and
derive meanings, pleasures, and momentary fulfillment. Within this shadow realm are the
“cultural tastes of subordinated formations of the people, particularly with those
disempowered by any combination of gender, age, class and race” (Fiske 1992: 30).
Every so often, however, this shadowy realm breaks out into the open, to charge the
atmosphere, to speak teeth to power. The cultural economy becomes politicized. Is protest
possible in contexts of power inequality and within political arenas where dominant groups
have near absolute control?
If so, what are the venues that nourish these sentiments of
rebellion and resistance?
In the second part of this essay, I explore the possibilities for the poor and the
disadvantaged to articulate their grievances in a context of inequality and social
stratification, and where structural dysfunctionalities inhibit the marginalized from active
participation in political life. I make reference to the third people power uprising in the
Philippines that occurred in May 2001, and which became known as Edsa Masa. In brief, the
Edsa Masa was supported by a fan base of deposed president Joseph Estrada who was
himself an actor of long-standing before he became a politician. The backbone of his
support was derived from a voter-base of fans, most of whom, presumably were also fans of
Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos. This intersection between politics and the culture economy
of the poor is an exciting arena for research on fan culture.
I further argue that the film and the telenovela are the popular cultural forms that
nourish the seeds of rebellion and resistance in the shadow culture economy, and from
where fans find an arena for political participation.
The Pelikula and the Telenovela: Vehicles of Fan Culture. Following a long period
of decolonization from the Spaniards and the onset of modernization under the tutelage of
the Americans, the Philippines moved towards a period of “secularization.” The Americans
brought cinema to the Philippines, taking over the role of the Catholic Church as a primary
agent of socialization. “Hollywood-ization” branded a burgeoning film industry that would
see the rise of localized versions of American film actors and actresses: the Elvis Presley and
Natalie Wood look-alikes. Aspiring singers aped Connie Francis and Anita Bryant. Philippine
television was full of entertainment shows that showcased raw talent, in the hopes of being
“discovered” and made into a star.
Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos were the primary
examples of this aspiration par excellence.
Alongside the arrival of television was the soap opera genre which changed the
culture industry in the Philippines well into the late 80s. Against a background of rapid
urbanization and migration into the cities, a new viewership was reared in the crowded
slums and settlements of the metropolis, having been displaced from their villages by the
forces of economic stagnation and social inequalities.
Further, the arrival of affordable
television in almost every household changed movie-going habits. Television was free and
perpetual --- one could watch it all day from one’s living room or even from the distant gaze
of a neighbor’s window, in a restaurant, a bar, a street corner, a mall, a sari-sari
[convenience] store. It was television that brought Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos to the
households of Maria and Teresa. They watched these young stars with avid interest, as they
witnessed these two enduring success stories through many years of signing and acting as
tools of personal liberation. The rural migrants that form the backbone of the Nora-Vilma
fan clubs took their latest cues from these telenovelas from which they re-crafted and readjusted their views of the world. The result is an acquired taste for fantasy.
It is the distinct peculiarity of urban life that rural migrants in search of better
prospects leave their places of origin in pursuit of a series of constructed fantasies --- the
promise of higher paying jobs; a possible romance with someone, preferably rich; the
enjoyment of the city’s plural forms and sources of gratification; a stab at social mobility
and social status, to return to their place of origin, more prosperous and affluent than when
they first left. For most migrants, the city becomes a site for “gambling in an urban lottery”
(Nelson 1979:51)
The reality, however, is that most migrants arrive in the city confronted by the stark
realities of urbanization and modernization, processes which entail social and psychological
adjustments for which they are not equipped. With very little employable skills, they end
up in low-end jobs in the service sector, or as contractual labor in enterprises which subvert
labor laws by declaring seasonal employment. For the younger migrants whose education
did not get past elementary schooling, chances for formal sector employment are almost nil,
thus they find their way into the homes of the upper and middle classes, to work as
domestic helpers, nannies, gardeners, houseboys, drivers. Their seek comfort in this shadow
cultural economy where they might temporarily escape from their disappointment and
disillusionment, preferring for a few hours before a television set, to experience vicariously
the fulfilled dreams of Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos --- thus providing them with a reason to
continue to hope.
Fan Culture as Rebellion and Resistance. Fast forward to May 2001. Some thirtyfour years later, Teresa and Maria have found factory jobs in an export firm. Both women
however heard of the arrest of former President Joseph Estrada who was ousted in an
earlier uprising in February of the same year, and who was taken to the military
headquarters for finger-printing. Mug shots were taken of the former president who looked
every bit like an ordinary criminal. Maria and Teresa along with millions of others fans who
voted for Estrada, were outraged. In large numbers they trooped to EDSA, the famous
highway running through five municipalities in Metro Manila, to protest the manner of
Estrada’s arrest, and to demand his reinstatement.
When does the popular culture economy leave the shadows and enter the political
stage? When do fans become political actors? It is that moment when the silence breaks,
James Scott [1990: 207] argues, that signals the end of the “silence of defiance in the public
transcript.” He calls it pure “political electricity, the high drama . . . when the dissent of the
hidden transcript crosses the threshold to open resistance . . . .”
For the fans turned protestors who have now matured through years of
disappointment and failure, their march to EDSA was much very unlike Nora Aunor and
Vilma Santos, both of whom have amassed enormous wealth, finally escaping the dreadful
background of poverty and squalor. Vilma Santos has married a pedigreed politician,
permanently exiting the shadow culture economy.
The breach occurred at midday when several thousands of them gathered at the
Edsa shrine, the very same site of the first two uprisings.2 It was a symbolic gesture of their
2
the first occurred in February 1986 that installed Corazon Aquino to the presidency and ended the 21-year
dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos. The second occurred in February 2001 that deposed elected president Joseph
Estrada after failed proceedings at his impeachment trial.
own liberation, the act of “trespassing” the site where their president was deposed only
three months ago. But it was also a symbolic trespassing, a penetration and occupation of
an exclusive zone, regarded as the enclave of the middle and upper classes. The Estrada
loyalists gathered there in a rare act of violating “hegemonic appearances,” to take the first
bold step in expressing their long-suppressed voice, and in so doing, to experience what
must have been an act of “personal authentication” [Ibid.: 208].
It must have been the same thrill experienced of watching the last episode of the
longest running telenovela in the Philippines called Mula sa Puso (From the Heart).
The
long-suffering heroine finally gathers her courage and challenges the antagonist --- a wicked,
rich, unscrupulous aunt --- to a fist fight, just the two of them, in a hidden warehouse, in
which to settle, physically, all the wrongs, the hurts, the rancor, and the acrimony of the last
three years. It was worth the wait, for when the wicked aunt is finally crushed under a cargo
truck, it was a long-drawn out death. For Teresa and all the million other viewers that
evening, it was the occasion to expunge their demons and “break[ing] through the allenglobing web of lies” [Vaclav Havel, quoted in Scott: 206], a moment of catharsis in front
on prime time television.
At the Edsa shrine, on a most unsuspecting hour, the protestors slowly started to
gather, each step a significant leap towards the recovery of their personal worth, to find
their voice with which to speak their own personal truth, to experience, at long last, a
“strong sense of recaptured human dignity” [Ibid.]
Edsa Masa peaked at approximately two million protestors, all of them at one point
of their lives, fans of Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos. Akin to the Brazilian carnival, Edsa Masa
is a “ritual of reversal” [Turner 1984: 137], or in Scott’s terms, a “subersive inversion” in
which long-held repressions became public hyperboles. “Bold stars” --- aspiring actresses
who break into showbiz careers via sexually suggestive roles --- paraded across the Edsa
stage in a fashion show of mockery. Dancers went into exhibitionist dancing to the tune of
Horny. The roof of the chapel was nearly destroyed with the weight of protestors pressing it
down. The giant statue of the Virgin Mary was painted with red graffiti and the shrine was
converted into a garbage dump-cum-public toilet. When the uprising finally ended seven
days later, the first sentinels were members of the Catholic Church, civil society
organizations, middle class activists and concerned individuals to clean the shrine of all form
and manner of human waste. It is said that at carnival time in Brazil, the streets of Rio are
“choked with the cars of the middle class, fleeing the revelries of the streets, dreading the
carnivalesque reversal of their hard-won bourgeois values” [Ibid: 138].
Epilogue.
Let me return to Maria and Teresa, both of whom occasioned this essay
in the first place.
Maria and Teresa joined Edsa Masa, and then became disillusioned by outcome.
Edsa Masa failed to reinstall their leader, Joseph Estrada, to the presidency. Instead, he was
placed under house arrest. Since then, their lives returned to the daily grind of housework
and evening breaks for watching their favorite telenovelas. They will suffer their defeat in
front of the television set out of which they continue to embroider her fantasies. The sequel
to the just-ended telenovela might provide a new storyline with which to construct their
new escapades.
Meanwhile, the maids next door told them of upcoming jobs in Singapore and
Hongkong, still as housemaids, but where wages are higher and life more convenient. They
calculated the cost of obtaining a passport and paying the agency fees plus the time
required of going through the cumbersome process of gathering all their necessary
documents to present to an equally repressive bureaucracy.
Oddly enough, the sequel was entitled Pangako sa Iyo (My Promise to You). They
looked at each other and laughed at the sheer irony of it all.3
Their president Erap was
gone. Faced with a string of legal cases and under hospital arrest, it didn’t seem that he
would to return to the presidency anytime soon. So are Nora Aunor and Vilma Santos, both
of whom have successfully navigated their way out of the shadow culture economy and who
no longer needed to sing and dance their way out of poverty. Their luck in the urban lottery
worked out, it was thorough and complete, but rare. Without their icons, and without a
president, both Maria and Teresa understood that none of them could fulfill their pangako
(promise) to people like them.
3
“Pangako” is a play on words that Filipinos often use to illustrate its opposite meaning. While it means
promise, it also rhymes with “napako” which means to get nailed, as Christ was nailed to the Cross because of His
salvation promise. The Biblical themes are inescapable in most Filipino films and telenovelas. See Reynaldo
Ileto’s “Pasyon and Rebolusyon.”