Radio and its new technology was introduced in the 1920s but reached the peak of popularity with the mind-boggling success of the soap opera, penned by the likes of Lina Flor and Liwayway Arceo. The komiks introduced millions of readers to the adventures of Kenkoy, Bondying, Darna, Dyesebel, Roberta, Kalabog En Bosyo, Ang Panday, Maruja, Jack en Jill, Facifica Falayfay, Petrang Kabayo, the ill-starred lovers of Maruja and Bukas…Luluhod ang mga Tala, the persecuted heroine in Bituing Walang Ningning, Gilda, or Insiang, to name a few. In the postwar years, Don Ramon Roces further promoted the reading frenzy with the komiks and its Proteus-like ability to forever transform itself. This immense popularity would continue until the 1980s, and would make the likes of Carmen Rosales, Rogelio de la Rosa, Gloria Romero, Fernando Poe Jr, Dolphy, Nora Aunor, to name a few, icons of popular culture. The Tagalog movies of the 1920s and 1930s were box-office hits, as the fans were regaled by the new technology of the moving picture. Galauran, Jose Esperanza Cruz, Teofilo Sauco, Teodoro Virrey, among others, became household names. When Liwayway came into being in 1922, the readers took to the new magazine format – a mixture of novels, short stories, poems, and features – with enthusiasm. And so did the bodabil of the 1930s until the 1960s with the likes of Pugo and Togo, Katy de la Cruz, Bobby Gonzales, Matimtiman Cruz, Reycard Duet, among others, doing non-stop variety show – song and dance routines, circus acts performed willy-nilly – to the delight of the crowd at Clover Theater or Manila Opera House, or some makeshift stage during town fiestas, even in the postwar years.
The zarzuelas of the American period attracted droves of theater-goers. When the Tagalog novel was first introduced in the Tagalog-speaking areas in the 1900s, thousands bought copies of the newspapers that serialized the novels and later, the novels in book form.
The 20th century is full of such rapturous response to artifacts of popular culture.
It was a colorful and almost breathless unfolding of everything that has sustained the show’s popularity – a medley of songs, jigs and dances, poetic language galore, characters in drag and their sidekicks in barong, and the ubiquitous and circuitous love story of a “ yaya (nanny)” now transformed into a modern-day Cinderella and her gorgeous love (the perfect image of the mestizo as lover in this colonial society), donning the creations of famed Francis Libiran, now finally allowed to fall into each other’s arms. Nor can anyone fail to see the huge Philippine Arena – previously the site of the Iglesia ni Cristo gatherings – filled to the rafters, as 55,000 people followed the spectacle on the stage. This is not the first time that the nation has seen such a massive and hysterical outpouring of emotions of hundreds of thousands of certified fans.Įat Bulaga stalwarts constantly refer to the number of tweets that breached the 20 million, the 30 million that has now gone over the 40 million mark.
The indiscriminate usage of such terms, with their inevitable cluster of contradictory meanings and images, merely fans the flame of the ongoing and oftentimes emotional and contentious debates on “ AlDub” – undoubtedly the greatest show on this side of the world, currently mesmerizing millions of people – and the show’s “value” in a nation of 100 million in the grip of poverty, corruption, and ruthless use of power. In the 1950s until the 1980s, such terms as “kabakyaan,” and “kabaduyan” were the operative words that further marginalized much of popular culture – the komiks, local television, Tagalog movies, soap operas, among others – as unfit for consumption by the privileged elite and the educated middle class who were as much obsessed with their own kitsch, mostly artifacts coming straight from the West and rendered in English. “Kababawan” is the most frequently hurled derogatory term at the show, and by “ kababawan” is meant “shallow,” superficial,” “silly,” “no worthwhile content,” “vacuous,” “empty,” “hollow,” among other loaded terms. The phenomenal success of the long-running television noontime program Eat Bulaga’s “ kalyeserye” has opened the floodgates of commonly held views on popular culture, now going viral on social media.