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Passionate Revolutions
Ohio University Research in International Studies
This series of publications on Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Global and Comparative Studies is designed to present significant research, translation, and opinion to area specialists and to a wide community of persons interested in world affairs. The series is distributed worldwide. For more information, consult the Ohio University Press website, ohioswallow.com.
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Executive editor:
Gillian Berchowitz
Southeast Asia Series consultants:
Elizabeth F. Collins and William H. Frederick
Passionate Revolutions
The Media and the Rise and Fall of the Marcos Regime
Talitha Espiritu
OHIO UNIVERSITY RESEARCH IN INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
SOUTHEAST ASIA SERIES NO. 132
OHIO UNIVERSITY PRESS
ATHENS
© 2017 by the Center for International Studies
Ohio University
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Espiritu, Talitha, author.
Title: Passionate revolutions : the media and the rise and fall of the Marcos regime / Talitha Espiritu.
Description: Athens : Ohio University Press, [2017] | Series: Ohio University research in international studies. Southeast Asia series ; no. 132 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017000722| ISBN 9780896803121 (pb : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780896803114 (hc : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780896804982 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Philippines—Politics and government—1973–1986. | Philippines—History—Revolution, 1986. | Mass media—Political aspects—Philippines. | Politics and culture—Philippines. | Mass media and culture—Philippines.
Classification: LCC DS686.5 .E87 2017 | DDC 959.904/6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017000722
To my parents,
Christian and Gliceria Espiritu,
and to my husband,
Kevin Durr
Contents
INTRODUCTION. The Power of Political Emotions
TWO. Social Conduct and the New Society
THREE. National Discipline and the Cinema
FOUR. Popular Struggles and Elite Politics
FIVE. The Media and the Second Coming of the First Quarter Storm
SIX. The New Politics, Lino Brocka, and People Power
CONCLUSION. The Force of National Allegory
Introduction
THE POWER OF POLITICAL EMOTIONS
The dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos came to an ignominious end on February 25, 1986. After twenty-one years in power, Marcos fled the Philippines following a four-day popular revolt dubbed people power. The euphoria in the streets was televised live around the globe. With the force of national allegory, these televised images conveyed a seemingly incontrovertible message: here is visible evidence that a people’s democratic aspirations can triumph over authoritarianism; here is proof of the utopian possibilities of political emotions.
The political spectacle of people power conjoins two stories, each one pivoting on the activation of emotion in the political sphere. On the one hand, there is the melodramatic story of how Marcos rose to power by creating a national family, a political fantasy that was both seductive and treacherous in its claims to transform the nation into a postcolonial utopia via a dictatorship of love. On the other hand, there is the story of how a sentimental culture of protest grew in close proximity to the “official” political sphere, an intimate public laboriously channeling the moral outrage of a people pained by the egregious excesses of the Marcos regime. The media figured prominently in both these stories. Marcos, after all, was a master of the political spectacle, and melodrama was both the mode and modus operandi of his statecraft. After the assassination of Marcos’s arch political rival, Benigno Aquino, Jr., in August 1983, however, the “freest press in Asia” came alive
