Mission Five: Globalization

OBJECTIVE ONE: LEARN

"The things you own, end up owning you/"

Tyler Durden, Fight Club

One of the recent trends in Hollywood that was made famous some years ago, was regarding the clothes that celebrities wore to certain events, like the premiere of their movies and to prestigious awarding ceremonies, such as the Golden Globes and the Oscars. 

The timeless question of "What are you wearing?" suddenly metamorphosed into "Who are you wearing?", and celebrities would then state names of various big name fashion designers such as Dolce and Gabbana, Versace, Oscar Dela Renta, among others. Why can't they just say that they wore clothes to these events?

And the sad thing is, Hollywood had long been deemed as the trendsetter, and these trends are being followed in our very own shores- shores that are supposedly protected by a huge body of water that is the Pacific Ocean. Apparently, however, no one is protected from the clutches of globalization.

Of course there is a good side to globalization. I remember taking up the lesson of the "Global Village" by Marshall McLuhan and it has indeed brought the world closer together. The advent of the Internet has enabled the fast dissemination of information and, especially for those people who have relatives in other nations, communication was made easy.

Even products which we deemed as something that was solely American have been brought to our country already, and it is only one of the effects of globalization. I cannot say that I am entirely free from these American products, because I am not.

No matter how much I watch the movie Fight Club and admired how Brad Pitt's character, Tyler Durden, has successfully fended off the advances of commercialism in his own life, I find myself watching the same sitcoms, buying the same clothes, listening to the same kind of music.

The reason for this is that the ideals of commercialism, and the influence of living this kind of lifestyle has seeped very deeply into everyone's mind so that it is nearly impossible to veer away from it. Everyone wants to be globalized, and since this is where everyone is going, it will be hard to go in the opposite direction, like a salmon contradicting the current of a body of water flowing downstream and instead going upstream.

We, in a sense, have becomes slaves to this kind of thinking, of acquiring anything new that Steve Job's wily mind has come up with, or of anything new that our favorite clothing brand has, or what new episodes out favorite Television Series has. We have been globalized fully, and we have been dependent on it.

So if I were an American who was intent on spreading the ideals of globalization in countries such as the Philippines, then I can flash a smile of satisfaction and pat myself of the back, because the mission was accomplished.

How can their mission not be accomplished? As I type this, I myself am munching on a KFC Twister, and this just shows how successful these guys are.

OBJECTIVE TWO: ACT

How Filipino is Philippine Basketball?

The National Basketball Association (NBA) is the global representation of the well-loved sport of Basketball here in the Philippines. This is the stage where Michael Jordan drained those pressure packed jump shots and where Magic Johnson and Larry Bird elevated passing to an even higher plane. This is where future Hall of Famers like Lebron James and Kobe Bryant now tread, and the league has captured the attention of the entire world, including the Philippines.

In the 1970’s people saw the need for the Philippines to have its own league where its own players can showcase their own talents in basketball much like the NBA, and thus came the conception of the Philippine Basketball Association (PBA). This league, for a while, showcased the homegrown talents of the Philippines in Basketball, and paved the way for names like Robert Jaworski and Alvin Patrimonio to emerge and be loved by the masses.

After a while, however, people clamored to see more of the American brand of basketball. They wanted to see six-footers jumping fifteen feet in the air to dunk that basketball. They want to see behind-the-back passes and rim-rattling dunks- things that not all homegrown talents can give them. And what was the solution for that? Imports. Former NBA players or those who are seldom-used were invited to play as imports here in the Philippines, and we bore witness to the dunks, the thirty-two points a game that American basketball is known for.

But at what cost? Now, instead of scouring the nation, including the remote provinces, for genuine basketball talents, scouts now look for these talents abroad. Instead of a native Filipino being able to play in the league to alleviate his family’s poverty, we get someone who is not even Filipino and yet is showing his wares in the so-called “Philippine” Basketball Association.

Now I know that not everyone shares my sentiments and that many people also think that bringing in imports would be nice because it elevates the level of our own basketball to a higher plane, but I am looking at it at a different perspective and I respect your opinion.

On one hand, we see that our brand of basketball has been elevated to par with the rest of the world’s, but on the other hand, our brand of basketball is not even really ours anymore—it has become a pastiche of ours and of other cultures.

Note: I derived this analogy from your Formula 1 example. Since about sports po yun, I thought that my example could also be about sports. :D

OBJECTIVE THREE: IMAGINE

“Narrator: When deep space exploration ramps up, it'll be the corporations that name everything, the IBM Stellar Sphere, the Microsoft Galaxy, Planet Starbucks. “–Fight Club

It’ll be hard not to admit that globalization has not affected us, because our very lives are rooted on its effects—from the coffee that we drink before we go to work to the sources of the news that we see on the television before we go to sleep—all of these have been affected by the phenomenon of globalization, which has been both lauded and criticized.

The internet can be deemed as primarily responsible for this globalization, and the spread of Western culture can be credited as one of the things that it has achieved. A myriad of my own assignments had been aided by the internet, and I cringe whenever I hear my parents having to type their own theses with the aid of only a typewriter (and no internet).

If I had to live my own life again without the internet’s presence being there, as well as the other influences of globalization, then I might be able to survive, although the life that I may lead would be far from what I am living now.

But if at this point in my life, when all the provisions are suddenly snatched away from me and from everyone else, life would really be hard. Like what the documentary had told us, the people who sell these products also sell ideas, and the ideas have already been imprinted on my mind as well as everyone else’s.  

And the idea here is that we cannot live without these things and provisions, and that is why we need them. Just like Starbucks is selling an idea about having a community, a place where we can hang out, and McDonalds is a place for families, the internet, whether it is deliberate and unconscious, sells the idea that there are so many things that can be done with it, that it would be impossible to live without it, which is what we feel during the Lent Season or when we go out of town.   

So I can say that I may be able to live without globalization and its effects such as the internet if they were not yet conceived during my lifetime and if I never get to see them entirely. But, at this point in my life, as well as our, lives their ideas which they sold have taken its toll on us and it would be hard to remove these ideas, so it would also be difficult without these provisions who presence we now relish. 

:)