‘Pinoy Pride’ is a symptom of a massive cultural lack
“Pinoy Pride!” has become a rallying cry from Filipinos who feel they are seen or our culture and identity are represented on a foreign platform. A contestant at a reality TV singing competition with a dollop of Pinoy blood breezed through auditions? Pinoy Pride! Their former alaga (ward) invited a Filipino nanny to a royal wedding. Pinoy Pride! An anime episode featuring a character that overheard a few seconds of Filipino sentences? Pinoy Pride!
“Pinoy Pride” has become cringe-worthy—a joke, even. It feels like forcing ourselves to be seen and heard. But I think this thirst for pride comes from something sinister and more entrenched.
“Pinoy Pride” is a cultural product of extreme want of recognition because our nation is rooted in shame.
When a Filipino gains visibility or gets approval from a foreign audience, particularly Western (read: white European or American), it triggers pride—a validation that we can contribute something more to the world beyond the soul-draining news stories of our many disasters (natural or elected). This thirst is dictated by something else that tries to veer away from the usual difficulties of being a Filipino. I argue that this intense hunger for Pinoy pride comes from the connected failures of our country’s political history and other disasters. I can say that these failures are a massive legacy of the political dynastic plunders and impunity.
“Pinoy Pride” is a form of retaliation for the nowness of and the difficulty of erasing poverty, want, massive inefficiency, and megalithic corruption found in the Philippines. Pinoy Pride is a pitiful gust of wind for a country and culture stuck in the doldrums of stagnation.
The issue with this craving for pride is how it manifests. Many of us celebrate when (a) we can mimic other people’s songs—just look at the YouTube videos of “voice coaches” marveling at Filipino singers sounding like the original, baiting Pinoy viewers for clout; (b) we excel at others’ dance styles, such as the significant Filipino presence in global hip-hop circles; and most troubling, (c) when foreigners, especially white people, shower Filipinos with admiration. This implies that validation from white audiences confirms our existence and worth, as if their approval defines us.
I am not suggesting that we divest ourselves from the foreign; after all, there is no such thing as a “pure” culture untouched by outside influences.
Culture is about overlapping with other cultures. We cannot avoid engagements and encounters with different cultures and influences. The point is not just to bask in the pride of our ability to mimic but to see the vital contributions we can give and what we have given. There are stories out there. It takes a lot of work and grit to realize that we are vital artists on the global stage, not just because of our sheer ability to be pliant in mimicry but also to shed this shallow stimulus of beaming from approval from white people.
After all, pride, in the secular sense, is a sentiment that comes from going through obstacles. Pride is a result of triumph over struggle. First, we must assess how pride must be by us and for us.
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This column is “Primer,” which serves two things: (1) Primer as in a nifty document that introduces concepts, methods, and approaches, and (2) Primer as in the act of preparing a surface, mainly canvas with a coat for the painter to render their images. Conflate the two, and this column serves as a site for discussing issues on art, culture, and the screams in between as coping mechanisms.
You may reach Chong Ardivilla at kartunistatonto@gmail.com or chonggo.bsky.social
