Kimberly Art Appreciation

BSA 1-4

Analysis of Defining the Filipino through the Arts: From Specialistic Innocence to
Participatory Consciousness by Felipe M. De Leon

Our culture is very rich and diverse that it connects us all Filipinos. It is composed
of our shared beliefs, traditions, values and principles. It is what makes us unique but it is
very saddening that we do not embrace this uniqueness, rather, we forcefully take it
out of our system and embrace the inferiority complex we have to the Western culture.
And this sad reality is well explained in the paper of Felipe M. De Leon, Jr. titled
“Defining the Filipino through the Arts: From Specialistic Innocence to Participatory
Consciousness.

We have achieved and regained our sovereignty against the western colonizers,
Spaniards and Americans, but is this really freedom? We may have freed ourselves from
the bloody wars of colonization but our minds are poisoned and still colonized by the
thought and idea that we are culture is below the western standards. We, Filipinos, are
imprisoned with the superiority of other cultures and race. That even if we have been
enlightened with great knowledge through the access of education, we do not use it
for our country’s own good but to ourselves alone which was explained by this paper.

It depicts the truth that we think lowly of what composed us as Filipinos – the
culture, the differences, the traditions and belief are regarded as inferior to the Western.
We are being controlled, our minds and the way we think have been influenced by the
Americans. They controlled our education and taught us ideals and values that are
different from what is marked in our own culture. Instead of instilling our bayanihan and
pakikipagkapwa, wherein we think of the common good of the people, we are taught
to place ourselves first and chase our own dreams and self interests disregarding our
responsibility to our community. Felipe De Leon’s statement, “Each tribe is after its own
good alone. Professional advancement is the highest good. And financial success the
highest reward (a market of warring, competing tribes?)” mirrors every person’s greatest
enemy, themselves.
 What I do not agree from these ideas of Mr. Felipe De Leon is that the parents of
Filipino youths are afraid that their children will forget the need for companionship and
our values of camaraderie and nationalism. I believe that the self-interest of their
children stemmed from their parents. The parents of Filipinos now are the ones who
clouds the mind of their children with the importance of being a successful professional
that they even push their children to find success in other countries.

First, we were fed of lies that our culture is inferior and now, we are conditioned
to accept what is majority accepted and duplicate these things that are shoved down
our throats. True to the author’s words, one example of this is our adherence to the
generally public accepted plots and story lines of box office standards and television
ratings as the criteria of what is best and of what we should do to succeed. We also
write predictable story plots for books we publish and make it similar to those from other
countries and rarely feature our culture in it. With this, they are killing our creativity and
innovativeness to produce our own art and flourish our culture to totally erase it from
ours and it is beginning to happen already. Once this happens, our cultural identity will
pop like a bubble that will be out of existence.

This paper is all about us, Filipinos, to be confident in our own skin. We should
treasure and nourish our culture that depicts who we are and what makes us different
but equally great among others. Let us take away the concept of Doña Victorina
Symdrome of having low self-esteem that doubts our capacity as Filipinos to achieve
greatness worldwide, rather, be one of our Philippine heroes that sacrificed their lives for
our sovereignty and start harnessing our culture with the knowledge and wisdom we
have. Our culture through the arts will leave our identity in the world for the future
generations to witness, appreciate, and respect. Embrace our diverse but rich culture
and we can finally help ourselves to liberate the human potential of Filipinos.