Pagpapakatotoo (to be real). That’s the buzzword—the guiding principle behind the rise of recently popular personalities in local Philippine television. Totoo sila (they're for real). Or so we are told.
Never mind if they have the table manners of chimpanzees and are so very nonchalant about their lack of urbanity. So what if, with threadbare talent, they became famous for...uh, just being famous?
Never mind if they offend sensitivities and sensibilities. As long as they provide amusement, they are excused for being cute and totoo.
Audience share
This is mass media, remember? You are talking about ratings and audience share. Success is not as lofty or abstract as significant human experience – leave that to the audiences at the Cultural Centre of the Philippines.
Success in media is founded on popularity and salability – the ability to amuse, shock, surprise. It is a question of having gall and the guts. Moreover, success has nothing to do with behaving with propriety. That is boring, predictable and so... conventional.
As long as totoo ka (you're real), the audience will love you. And you are totoo (true) as long as you break the mold and act as if you are being sincere in your naiveté or just being unaffected and candid. After all, that is all a celebrity has to do: Be true to himself.
His principal responsibility is not to grow in his chosen craft or to push himself to be better at what he does. Who cares? What a celebrity does off-screen warrants even more interest (translate: Media mileage) than what he does in front of the camera.
How many careers out there are founded on infamy and scandals, on sound bytes and tabloid columns rather than inspiring performances – or simple employment? How many celebrities build their reputation on the frequency of Facebook shout-outs or Twitter messages?
Celebrity rules
These days, a celebrity is primarily a public figure: He exists to titillate the public by concocting gimmicks that fuel yellow journalism and fast-food gossip. The life span of his career depends on how long people believe in his vaunted “honesty” or pagpapakatotoo (realism), or how long before they find that it was all a put-on, a scripted act to grab attention – or sometimes a simple case of stupidity mistaken for genius. If he is really wise, before people get tired of him, he can graduate to politics, still basking in his image as a totoong tao (real person). How convenient, di ba?
Gone are the times when those, who earned public adulation were veritable demigods. They represented that exceptional hybrid of the human race blessed with all the right genes, matched with good luck to get them in front of the TV cameras. Beautiful men and women of good moral character were role models, almost prefabricated by the publicity machinery of studios in order to give to the public only paragons of beauty, charm and even intelligence.
But then nagpakatotoo na tayo, di ba (we have become honest, right)? We have come to realise that not everybody can have the accurate mixture of privileged beauty and exceptional talent. We have stopped deifying the unreachable and, instead, bestowed power on the dregs. This is because audiences have changed priorities. They no longer want to see ideals; they want to see themselves. Better yet, they want to see people who they feel are beneath them and whom they can watch with utmost amusement like house spiders made to fight for their life on a barbecue stick. The pleasure does not come from aspiration; we have replaced that with condescension.
Voyeur culture
Because media wants to be the great equalizer as well as the agent in turning everyone into voyeurs, the chance to become a celebrity has been so democratized. As long as you are totoo, even if your looks cannot be redeemed by the magic of makeup, Adobe Photoshop or the options available in Vicky Belo (plastic surgery)’s clinic, the public can, and will, still adore you as long as you continuously tickle their fancy.
That is the whole point of reality television nowadays, isn’t it? Amusement. Bewilderment. Shock. A feeling of being one and the same with mortal and flawed celebrities.
Thus, they own an audience, who loves them, shouts out their names and defends them in the battle that is fought in chat rooms and blogs in the stratosphere called the Web.
The thin line that differentiates greatness from mediocrity, even goodness from what is just plain bad, has suddenly dissolved. In a media supposedly celebrating truth and being true to one’s self, what has emerged is a culture of amorality. Everything can be justified by the argument that nagpapakatotoo lang siya (he/she was just being true)...therefore what that one says, exhibits or flaunts must be good.
What sorts of signals are being sent to the public about righteousness? What sorts of values are being propagated and validated if images and messages sent to millions of people point to an ambiguous standard where everything can be justified in the name of so-called authenticity?
Arguments arise as to whether or not it is the responsibility of television to educate and uplift the moral fibre (if not, even just the intelligence) of its audience. Others insist that commercial television is there only to entertain and give the public what it demands; so leave the more difficult responsibility of education to the teachers and the government. Don’t expect any soul-searching from your TV shows...much less from the stars, who crowd the surface area of your home screens.
But there are others who still believe that since the general public lets these images and messages enter the sanctuary of their homes, there must be a sense of accountability as to what is affirmed and validated in the minds of viewers.
Truth bastardised
Sure, television was never meant to be pedantic or pedagogic. But neither should this medium shirk its duties. Television cannot say that it is a mere supplier of entertainment and is not responsible for how the audience is affected by what it sells—and especially how the selling is done.
Yes, mabenta ang pagpapakatotoo (being real sells). Then again, when one assesses how truth has been so bastardised in the frenzy of media competition, one is bound to realise that what is repeatedly, and often shamelessly, presented as real has ceased to be what is rightfully true.
