by: Super Jepoy
IMAGINING A NATION:An Essay
“It would be relatively easy to produce a citizenry
with a high degree of political literacy...but it is
another thing to aspire to form a people who can
intervene in public affairs at a level of social purposes...
For that we need more than political literacy;
we need moral imagination.”
-- Randy David, PDI
The world’s entry to the 21st century remarkably presupposes the essence of media as one of the most creative constructions of the present generation. Media has become distinct in its power to illumine fame and fortune, beauty and vanity, of victory and defeat, of resurgence and destruction. It is therefore fascinating and alarming to look at the influence of media exposure (like in a talkshow) in the context of the nation’s imagery. Politics and media, being the primary vocabularies of Randy David’s academic enterprise elicited both coercive and collective perspectives on how to view the present Filipino society.
The primary assumption of media seen in the audio-visual interplay of the television was to elicit the audience attention and interest. The end is to entice the viewers the tendency to become addicted to the medium (in this context television), substantially functional to the interest of advertisers for prolonged broadcast air-time. Yet historical and political development of media and communication discourses accounted for the responsibility of the people working behind the medium. There emerged a growing concern to utilize television as a tool to rebuild, re-organize and re-image the nation. In essence this what David’s TV program “Public Forum” later “Public Life” seem to have provided. As exemplified in his article, “...Our goal was simple: We would try to provide our viewers enough information and context to enable them to follow discussion of public issues, and to take a personal stand on those issues. In this, I think, we succeeded quite well.”
Working on the concept of power in media, David argues that television through his program provided a venue for the Filipino people, especially the masang Pilipino, new vocabularies to chew public issues. For him, “Public Life” can be accounted for the formation of social conciousness and thus, subsumes an estimate of political literacy.
Seen through the perspective of MTRCB controversy about pornography, David further elucidates the relative definition of ethical and moral issues attached to the formation of social concerns and political machinery. Being a sociologist himself, the cultural presuppositions (like his usage of Filipino cockfights as a tool to package a show) relentlessly admonish the formative function of categorization. The categories of ‘good’ and ‘evil’, ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, ‘decent’ and ‘immoral’ were thus furthered by the relative display of opinions and visuals of the ‘television’. To this David was drawn to introspection.
“We typically understand politics solely in external terms, as something out there, something to be neatly comprehended, rather than as something that also profoundly forms us”, into which David clearly asks the readers to take a more critical look unto the issue of political literacy beyond the very brief, packaged discussion of a TV program. This coercive tendency of David’s premises account for his sociological biases-- his passion for political maturity and critical admonitions (seen in his favorite citations of Foucault and Nietzcshe).
But also it is worthy to note that he ends his arguments about media -- the television, and political literacy, by seeking the concept of Tivnan’s moral imagination. Through this, David was careful to provide the reader the current imagery of Filipino polity. To therefore think that we as a nation, can be a people of matured citizenry --- “well-informed about the laws of the land, about the structures and procedures of government, about the duties of the public officials and the obligations of citizens” is a possible social construct. Yet drawing out from his numerous encounters with Filipino people (in all class stratification) David ends by questioning the capacity of the Filipino people to choose and curve the country’s future by herself. Because for him, it takes more than the political literacy of Filipinos, but the ability to “critically examine our own beliefs and desires without losing hope and vitality”.
This is the “moral imagination” -- new human beings who could free themselves from their prejudices and begin to see the world through the lenses of many vocabularies.
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