Alternative Canons
Popular Culture as Alternative Canon
In his Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci talks about the concept of the “national-popular”, and how
’writers’ and ‘people’ do not have the same conception of the world. In other words the feelings of the people are not lived by the writers as their own, nor do the writers have a ‘national educative’ function: they have not and do not set themselves the problem of elaborating popular feelings… [Thus] the lay forces (intellectuals) have failed in their historical task as educators and elaborators of the intellect and moral awareness of the people-nation. They have been incapable of satisfying the intellectual needs of the people precisely because they have failed to represent a lay culture…as was necessary from the national point of view, and because they have been tied to an antiquated world, narrow, abstract, too individualistic or caste-like. (207; 211)
Gramsci’s observation seems to reinforce Raymond Williams’ assertion that “culture is ordinary”, a notion “which expresses [how] certain meanings and values [are] not only in art and learning but also in institutions and ordinary behavior” (qtd. in Edensor 19). Thus we see that in popular culture, the institutionalization of similar habits, assumptions, routines, languages, and preferences creates a shared value system that define the culture of a period, which in turn allow people to organize around the concept of an “imagined community”. Globalization and mass production have multiplied and fragmented forms of cultural capital, which has resulted to popular culture thus becoming “a prime site for contestations of value” (Edensor 16). Civil society then becomes the motor of history, for this is “where the meanings and values that can sustain or transform society are created” (Jones 33).
If we accept these to be true, then national literature would be more aptly represented not by the exclusivist texts of the upper classes, but by the humble works consumed by the masses, the assumption being that common tastes are also valid lines or organizing common culture. Such works have traditionally been derided for their populist nature and relegated as inferior to the more highbrow literature of the elite. In the case of the Philippines, these works span a variety of genres and forms, with romance novels and comics being the most popular and accessible. Interestingly, it is these texts that represent the bulk of consumption and readership, with publication numbers being almost ten times more than those of texts considered high literature, as in the case of Martha Cecilia’s romance novels, or Bob Ong’s ABNKKBSNPLAko.
