All I want for Christmas

Uh, I’m wearing dentures now, so my two front teeth have long flown up to ToothFairyland! So my Christmas wishes this season are neither physical nor material.

Please, please, show biz, arts and media-savvy Santa, gift all of us on Christmas eve (and after) with these much more significant and permanent goodies and “shouldies”:

Goodbye, Colonial Mentality! It’s been many, many years since our last “official” wave of geographical colonizers coopted our silver seas and shores, but many Filipinos still suffer from the psychological, sociological and cultural burden of believing that foreign and imported products and services are inherently superior to local and homegrown!

We were taught too well to believe that oppressor-benefiting lie for centuries—that’s why, despite our best efforts, we can’t rise above it and let it go.

May 2016 be the start of our individual and collective self-liberation!

Related to this is our second biggest wish, that we stop using self-limiting terms like “world-class,” “Broadway,” “global,” “West End,” etc., to denote superior quality.

Yes, it’s good to be able to compete internationally, but our first obligation is to serve and do right by ourselves and our compatriots.

Homegrown productions

So, let’s go out of our way to support our homegrown plays and musicals and other artistic and cultural products, because “they tell our own stories and sing our own songs!”

Third, Filipino viewers and listeners have to rise above our similarly “well-trained” tendency to be passive and all-accepting in the way that we relate to the shoddy “entertainment” that’s being smugly thrown our way by “stars” and “artists” who have an insultingly low regard for our intelligence and taste.

To counteract this downward spiral of diminishing returns, let’s finally make dynamic use of our collective Viewer Power, which can motivate and even force our indolent entertainment and information suppliers to give us much better products and services—or suffer the financial consequences thereof.

Instead of all those 40 different groups giving awards for TV, for instance, why don’t they focus on viewing shows constantly, to come up with suggestions for better work?

Yes, it’ll take much more time and effort than just handing out all those self-serving and dubious TV “honors,” but it’ll redound to much more real benefits for our grossly underserved viewing public.

Let’s all remind ourselves that TV is powerful in many more ways than are immediately obvious, so that force should be balanced and vetted by Viewer Power, which is underutilized and -appreciated in this country—which is why we’re in the mess we’re in.

—What gleaming, glinting goodie and shouldie do you want to see beneath your Christmas tree this season? Dear reader, share and care!