The Philippine Online Chronicles

“Of course Darren Criss is Filipino. Lahat naman sila, Pilipino kapag may prino-promote dito (They’re all Filipino when they’re promoting something here),” cried a friend’s status message on Facebook. I didn’t Like it because I didn’t know what he was talking about.

I haven’t heard of Darren Criss because I don’t watch Glee. My TV-viewing regimen consists entirely of AMC shows (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead) and cartoons. That’s it. Most of my pop cultural knowledge trickles from friends’ conversations about what’s in and what’s not. I’m not even entirely sure if MTV is still a thing.

But I have heard of Glee. Who hasn’t? It’s this show, right? A high school drama with singing? Check. Not really interested, but if that floats some people’s boats, hey! That’s cool.

“I only fast forward to the musical numbers,” a dude friend said defensively when I asked him what Glee was about. I tried to tune in this season and realized that my friend is a liar, his pants constantly on fire. At the risk of poking the hornet’s nest of Gleeks, I have to say the songs on this thing are garbage. Rehashed pop tunes lip-synched as a TV gimmick. But you have to respect their hustle—the gimmick works. People won’t shut up about this show. To be perfectly honest, based on the handful of episodes I’ve seen, this show’s good enough even without the (bad) music.

I admire Glee’s premise. A handful of misfits bands together in the tough world of high school, facing too-real problems like teenage pregnancy, social hierarchy, bullying and what not. It’s like The Breakfast Club set in the 2000’s. It celebrates human differences and aims to promote cultural harmony. It’s pretty awesome.

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80's Trailers - "The Breakfast Club" (1985) (JamesDeanRebel)

But I don’t quite get the hype of having Charice Pempengco do a cameo episode on Glee. I have nothing against the girl, honestly. She can sing, she seems nice enough. She’s working it, stacking her Benjamins. It’s a Glee episode, no more, no less. Nothing earth-shattering. I just didn’t quite understand why the TV promotional ads were touting her cameo performance like it was a heroic last-stand for our race.

Criss, who plays the out-and-proud gay grand mameshka of an all-boys private school’s glee club is, apparently, half-Filipino. How about that. Another American TV show, Pretty Little Liars, has one of the main characters played by a half-Filipina.

Well. That’s… nice?

And that’s about the extent of my enthusiasm for this topic. I mean, hey! Pinoys on American TV! Okay.

Because, really, it was bound to happen. There are approximately 1.8 million Filipinos in America, the second largest Asian population living there after the Chinese. We’re generally pretty as a people, also quite a talented breed. Why wouldn’t they want us in their TV shows?

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Glee Darren Criss and the Warblers sing Train's 'Hey Soul Sister' (MrJrteixeira)

Don’t get me wrong—I understand why Filipino representations in American media are extremely important to Filipinos in the States. It’s an affirmation of their existence, proof positive that they have left an impression in America’s geo-cultural topography. There is nothing worse than being invisible in a so-called melting pot of cultures, and it’s always good for Fil-Am kids to grow up knowing they don’t have to be blonde and blue-eyed to be successful celebrities. Shows like these that allow diverse cultural representation are important.

However, I speak as a Filipina living in the Philippines, with only one aunt making her bones in the US. I have a particular bias. I just don’t see how I’m supposed to be affected by progressive cultural breakthroughs in their shows.

Granted, these Filipinos/ half-Filipinos/ quarter-Filipinos on American TV are indeed talented and deserve their day in the sun. It’s mighty big of them too to acknowledge their Filipino roots instead of denying it. However—and this is my sticking point—their experiences as Filipinos living in America are different by far from the day-to-day experiences of Filipinos living in the Philippines.

Far be it for me to cry “tokenism!” at any international celebrity who claims to have an ounce of Filipino blood in their veins, I only wish to point out that multiple layers of meaning come into play when analyzing media and cultural representation. Underneath TV’s gimmicky glitz and glamour is a grid of many positions of power that we-- the audience-- must be aware of. Yes, watching TV is serious business.

Consider this: our fraction-Filipino idols are not directly presented as Filipinos on American TV. Glee’s Blaine and Pretty Little Liars’ Emily are as American as adobo, a reflection of America’s constantly changing cultural landscape. In the same manner that America has claimed sushi, blues and jazz music, and yoga as an exercise, this cultural empire has also claimed Filipinos as part of their ever-expanding ethnic medley. “No matter what your race is, you’re American,” the TV seems to say, and while this may mean cultural tolerance and progress for Filipinos in America, it’s damnable for locals in their native lands.

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Shay Mitchell Interview: Pretty Little Liars (clevverTV )

What about Charice Pempengco’s character in Glee, I hear you ask. She was presented as Filipino. Ah, but dear reader, did you hear her speak with that clear American twang? I won’t deny how awesome it was to have a Filipino character beat American-Jew Rachel Berry at her own game. It was like watching Bruce Lee rip out Chuck Norris’ chest hair in Way of the Dragon, the triumphant Oriental striking back with surprising vengeance. But does this, by any chance, negate media representation’s process of Othering or excluding cultural groups that are different?

Not likely. All it does is reshape the current notions of the Other. Shows like Glee drive the point that Filipino-Americans and other ethnic minorities in America are no longer strangers in this brave new world. But we are. We—the audiences separated from Glee’s geographical epicenter—without our American twang and fashion sensibilities, with our own slang speak, subcultures, and localized social power structures, we’re different. Consider the American cables in Wikileaks, the racial profiling in American airports, our outsourced call center agents who undergo months of training to speak American English because callers don’t want to talk to Filipinos or Indians, they want Americans. Outside of American TV shows, high schools and social brackets, are we tolerated?

Photo is an edited version of two images: Darren Criss Some rights reserved by KellyLongbottomx3. / Shay Mitchell and Ashley Benson (cropped) Some rights reserved by rafa.reinheimer.