POPULAR CULTURE AND DEVELOPMENT: A CASE STUDY
PAUL HARTMANN University of Leicester
uch of the research carried out on mass communications in the M Third World has been concerned with the use of communication in support of development. Indeed, research into development communication has become something of a specialized field, distinct in many ways from other areas of communication research (see e.g. Schramm and Lerner, 1976; Teheranian et al., 1977). While there may be certain benefits in the growth of a specialty of this kind, there are also drawbacks that result from the tendency of research into communication and development to become divorced from the mainstream of mass communication research in general, and from the growing interest in international communications as these affect the Third World in particular (see e.g., Harris, 1974; Dorfman and Mattelart, 1975; Schiller, 1976; Tunstall, 1977). In this paper I wish to suggest that research into communications and development that becomes so specialized as to ignore the wider communication environment becomes incapable of offering adequate answers even to its own questions about how mass communication might aid development. I hope also to illustrate how the kind of question that interests researchers concerned with "cultural domination," "cultural imperialism," and the like, also needs to be considered by the development communication researcher--though, with limited exceptions (Katz and Wedell, 1978), the two kinds of research have tended to remain distinct. I shall make my argument by describing a project that started out as a straightforward question about development communication, and by explaining how it became necessary to broaden its focus to a consideration of these more general problems. What follows is, in effect, a case study of aspects of mass communication in a developing country; it is an attempt to illustrate features of the mass communication process in fairly concrete terms.
Popular Culture and Development
85
COMMUNICATIONS AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE PHILIPPINES
The project originated as an attempt to evaluate the work of an organization producing communications in support of development in the Philippines. The organization in question is the Communication Foundation for Asia (CFA). CFA produces a range of communications, mostly in conjunction with various development agencies, both public and private. Examples of its work include flip-charts, comics, a fieldworker's handbook for use in family planning education, sound cassette magazines for use in agricultural extension work, booklets and sound-slides on the formation of cooperatives, and more ordinary educational materials--some of them of a religious nature. In addition, CFA has produced an award winning feature film with a family planning theme, television documentaries, and a number of radio drama series. The organization is non-profit-making and is funded mainly by grants from aid-giving bodies. Some of its work is described in Maglalang (1976). It was decided to focus mainly on the radio drama as one of the more interesting examples of attempts at development communication. It was hoped that the findings might have implications beyond the specifics of CFA's drama output, or, for that matter, the particular circumstances of the Philippines. Part of the attraction of the project was that it permitted an empirical study of the developmental relevance of popular e n t e r t a i n ment--a field which, when not entirely ignored by researchers, has tended to be approached in a largely impressionistic way. Before outlining the research design and describing the results, it is necsssary to say something about the importance of radio drama in the Philippines. The Republic of the Philippines is a developing country that is well provided with mass communications. About a dozen daily papers have a combined circulation of three quarters of a million, concentrated in the main cities where the press is truly a m a s s medium. In the provinces, however, newspaper readership is minimal, in spite of their approximately forty small-circulation weekly papers. The picture for weekly magazines is similar. On the other hand, there is a large weekly output of comic books (aimed at adults) with widely dispersed circulations said to approach two million each week. There is also a comparatively large local film industry, though there is still reliance on imports to serve the country's nine hundred or so cinemas (Communicators in the Philippines, 1975; Book of the Philippines, 1976). Television also is concentrated around the main towns. About two-thirds of Manila's
86
Studies in Comparative International Development / Fall~.Winter 1979
homes have sets, but this represents about half of all sets in the country. The reach of television is, however, spreading rapidly. There are twenty-six stations altogether, five of them in Manila. Radio is by far the most important medium, and reaches all parts of the islands. In 1977 there were twenty-seven stations in Manila alone, and about two hundred in the country as a whole. Some of the more important stations belong to networks. A number of these are government and other (e.g., religious) non-commercial stations, but the vast majority operate on a commercial franchise and are financed by advertising revenue. Most stations broadcast music and chat shows, but the most popular and successful stations are drama stations. In Manila, for instance, the two stations with the largest audiences broadcast soap opera all day, and much of the evening. Between them they accounted for 36 percent of the weekday listening audience in March, 1977 (Philippine Mass Communication Research Society, 1977). Over fifteen hours of drama are broadcast in Manila each weekday, most of which are rebroadcast elsewhere. Cebu is also an important drama production center. The dramas are in thirty-minute time slots, some of them serials and some single plays. Subject matter varies, but the love or domestic type of story aimed particularly at housewives is the most common. There are also crime stories and tales of fantasy and horror. Several of the serials in particular feature magical super-heroes, from Superman-like figures to women with wings and supernaturally-endowed children who work miracles to rid the world of evil. A number of plays also have religious or spiritual themes. (The Philippines is the only Christian--mainly Catholic---country in Asia.) The high-brow view of this radio drama is generally that it is "housemaid's entertainment" and beneath serious consideration. It is also widely regarded as "escapist." People employed in promoting "development," if they think about it at all, mostly regard radio drama as irrelevant to their concerns. There are, however, others in both the broadcasting and development sectors who would like to see radio drama used as a vehicle of information and attitudes with a developmental impact. In recent years, under official urging, there have been increasing attempts to include developmental messages in dramatic productions. CFA's involvement in the production of soap opera is based on the assumption that, since radio drama is a major entertainment medium, it should be used to foster developmental objectives. The series of thirty minute single plays studied in this research was entitled Panginorin
Popular Culture and Development
87
(Horizon). The dramatized stories were written to illustrate various aspects of problems of development in countryside and city, and their possible solution. The series was broadcast over the main Manila drama station, where it tended to rate in the top ten or so radio programs during its run. It was also aired on several provincial stations. The immediate question the research set out to answer was whether it was any more "developmental" than the general soap opera output, and, if so, in what way. In order to do this, it was necessary to locate this particular drama series in an appropriate cultural context. This in turn raised questions of much more general significance. MASS COMMUNICATION AND DEVELOPMENT
We may take as a starting point Everett Rogers' (1976:225) revised definition of development as a widely participatory process of social change In a society, intended to bring about both sooal and material advancement (including greater equahty, freedom and other valued qualities) for the majority of the people through their gaining greater control over their env,ronment.
The key phrase is "widely participatory process," implying, as Rogers puts it, that development should not be thought of solely in terms of "what government does to (and for) the people" but also as "selfdevelopment," the local community activity through which the people themselves may gain greater control over their environment. Whatever else development may involve, then, it involves a degree of popular participation in the type of activity that will lead to desired social change. How far such popular involvement occurs depends on many things of a primarily political and economic nature, but it also depends on attitudes and outlooks among the people. By this I do not mean individual psychological differences, but aspects of the culture, commonly held perspectives on life, shared images of reality, prevailing ideas about what is desirable and possible, and the appropriate ways of achieving desired goals. The culture of a group in this sense may be thought of as representing characteristic solutions to common problems; it is based largely upon experience, including the experience preserved in tradition. For present purposes it is helpful to think of a culture in this sense as deriving from two kinds of sources. First is that kind of "knowledge" based upon actual life experiences which the individual acquires either directly or
88
Studies in Comparative International Development / Fall-Winter 1979
indirectly through others in the group. This we might call a situational or 'situated' culture because it is rooted in situations within the range of actual experience of group members. Second is a range of information and values which the individual acquires via the mass media at several levels removed from original experience. This we may call a mediated culture. One of the central tasks of mass communication research is examining the relationship between situated and mediated cultures. Of course, things are much more complex in practice; there is no such thing as 'pure' mediated culture, and few, if any, pure situated cultures. Real cultures are the product of continual interaction between the two types of elements. Nonetheless, the distinction is made for analytical purposes. The present work is an attempt to relate mediated to situated elements of popular culture in light of development needs. Popular outlooks may be regarded as more or less developmental insofar as they are consistent with the achievement of the goals of development. One aspect of developmental consciousness is the attitudinal counterpart of what Alan Wells (1972) has called "producerism' ' - - a s opposed to "consumerism" and to other features of a culture that may retard development. Insofar as mass communication may contribute to the formation, maintenance, or change of prevailing perspectives on life, it too may be regarded as more or less developmental in character. METHODS AND RESULTS
To assess the developmental relevance of radio soap opera within this framework, answers are needed to a number of questions. First, it is necessary to know something about popular outlooks as these bear upon development. Second, we need to know what u s e people make of the dramas to which they listen. What does drama listening mean in their lives? Does it somehow contribute to the way they see the world, and if so, how does this relate to the development needs of their community and society? Finally, we need to know something about the perspectives on life that the soap operas offer their listeners. Answers to these questions should allow us to say something about the place of radio soap operas in society. This in turn would provide a context within which the value of any particular drama series produced as "development communication" might be assessed (in the present case, the drama produced by CFA).
Popular Culture and Development
89
The Drama Audience Information about the drama audience was obtained through a survey. Since commercial audience research data indicates that the main audience for drama is among the lower socio-economic sections of a population (i.e., the majority of the people), the survey was carried out in areas where such people are most likely to be found. There were two survey sites, one in a slum area of Metro Manila and the other in a rice-growing village in Cavite Province (about forty kilometers outside of Manila but still within the range of the main Manila radio stations). The sample was skewed to,yards women since more women than men listen to radio dramas; but, apart from this, sampling was as random as circumstances would permit. The main features of the sample are shown in Tables 1 to 3. In reporting the results, sex, area, and other differences in responses are referred to only when it is necessary to the argument. Radio was found to be the most used mass medium among all sections of the sample. Drama proved to be the most popular program format among women, and the second most popular among men (they showed a slight preference for music). Almost all the people interviewed listened to drama regularly; about a quarter of the sample claimed to listen to more than four dramas a day. A number of questions in the interview schedule were designed to find out what drama listening meant to the respondents. In particular, they were encouraged to talk about the drama they liked best and to give their reasons for listening. The gratifications obtained were probed by openended questioning. Responses were analyzed along the lines suggested in Herta Herzog's (1941) early work and those of more recent "uses and gratifications" researchers (McQuail et al, 1972; Blumler and Katz, 1974). The results confirmed quite clearly the findings reported elsewhere, i.e., that the common assumption that people use this type of entertainment mainly for " e s c a p e " is an oversimplification. Escapist uses were strongly overshadowed by more pragmatic ones. In particular, people claimed to derive advice, guidance, or "lessons" from the plays. The perceived realism of the plays and the ability of listeners to empathize with the characters and to relate the stories to everyday life emerged as a major part of their appeal. About a third of the respondents said that they learned lessons from the plays or that they found them helpful in some way. These sentiments were expressed in statements such as the following.
90
Studies in Comparative International Development / Fall-Winter 1979 Table 1 Age Distribution of Sample, by Location and Sex
Age
Urban
Rural
Male
Female
Total
15-19
38
~h
22
60
82
20-2L
39
~2
2b
57
81
25-29
38
39
19
58
77
30-3h
20
17
9
28
37
35-39
21
25
6
ho
h6
ho-h~
16
13
I0
19
29
~5-h9
9
8
7
1o
17
50-%
12
13
~0
15
25
55-59
3
6
5
~
9
60-6~
3
7
5
5
1o
65*
2
6
h
4
8
No data
8
~
6
6
12
209
22L
127
306
h33
Total
Even ff I do not experience the sufferings of others, the drama touches something deep instde me; I become more understanding of others. It prepares me for similar situauons I m~ght meet. This is a fantasy story that 1 find entertaining--though some episodes are very true to hfe I hsten to find out what powers these evtl sprats have, because they might really exist
Respondents were also asked what problems theysaw in their local community and in the country as a whole, and were questioned about the perceived causes and possible solutions of the problems mentioned. This elicited a range of perceived problems which included the lack of irrigation in the countryside, poor sanitation in the city, and the rising cost of living. Most problems mentioned were related to development needs, as these are generally understood. Most people claimed to know about the problems they mentioned from first-hand experience, though some people had learned about national problems by listening to the radio. One of the most interesting findings concerned the attitudes which people expressed about possible solutions to their problems. In many cases there was a sense of helplessness, often manifested as an attitude
Popular Culture and Development
91
Table 2 Occupations of Respondents, Percentage Distribution (rounded) Urban Occupation
Rural
Male
Female
12%
3%
0%
4%
2%
0%
47%
5%
Skilled manual - e.g. carpenter, mechanic, tailor
16%
4%
3%
4%
Semi-skilled and unskilled manual - e.g. labourer, driver, farm helper, plastic washer
28%
11%
26%
8%
Other menial - e.g. housemaid, laundress, street vendor
0%
6%
0%
5%
Stall holder, small shopkeeper
7%
11%
0%
7%
Student
14%
11%
7%
10%
Unemployed
17%
8%
10%
8%
Housewife
o%
45%
0%
45%
Other, and no data
3%
2%
7%
5%
57
152
70
154
Professional, semiprofessional, supervisory clerical Farmer
N
Male
Female
Table 3 Education of Respondents (rounded percentages) Level reached No f o ~ % l education, or religioas instruction only
Urban
Rural
2%
7%
Male
Female
Total
3%
5%
4%
At least some elementarj
32%
50%
33%
45%
42%
At least some high school
46%
25%
39%
33%.
35%
Some beyond high school
1 6%
1 2%
1 8%
1 2%
1 4%
5%
6%
7%
5%
5%
209
224
11 7
306
433
No data N
92
Studies in Comparative International Development / Fall-Winter 1979
of fatalistic resignation in the face of the severe hardships that beset these communities or as an attitude of looking to government or other authorities for solutions. At the same time, and sometimes co-existing with this type of attitude, the view was repeatedly expressed that local initiatives or communal action by the people themselves could help to improve things. Here are some illustrative quotes. The main problem here is the insecurity of land ownership. We're squatters; we don't own the land. If we are sent away, what happens then? We want to own the land. There's no easy solution; only the President can solve the problem He can buy the land and award ~t to the residents. (Unemployed city male, 24) The village council are inactive, they don't give much attention to the village. People should take the initiative to help their village and then the councilmen may follow. Yes, 1 can help If people would begin I would join in. (Rural female, 21) Other questions in the interview showed that radio was by far the most used source of information about government development programs but that, generally speaking, radio drama, though one of the most popular program types, played comparatively little part in spreading such information. Only in the case of family planning could any appreciable number of respondents recall a drama that had dealt with the subject. This would appear to reflect the efforts of the Commission on Population's efforts to use drama to promote family planning. Apart from this, the survey data suggest that, whatever lessons people derived from soap operas, they bore little relationship to formally defined development goals. The survey, then, provided some basic information about media use, about the place of drama in listeners' lives, and about characteristic attitudes which bear on the involvement of people in pursuing development goals. Against this background, the content of a sample of popular drama was analyzed with a view to assessing its developmental relevance.
The Dramas In order to represent the broad range of drama available, one week's output (six days) of each of ten popular thirty-minute plays broadcast over the two main Manila drama stations was selected for analysis (sixty plays in all). There were four love or domestic dramas, two dramas dealing with crime and justice, two in the horror and fantasy category, and two others that might loosely be described as "spiritual" since they
Popular Culture and Development
93
had strong moralistic overtones. All the plays chosen were from the more popular among available drama series, most of them with ratings in the top twenty radio programs in the Manila area. For simplicity, we shall refer to these dramas collectively as "commercial" dramas. Most of the plots of the love/domestic plays were variants of the familiar" love triangle"; common situations included poor girl/rich boy relationships, parental opposition to young romance, revenge or suicide by jilted parties, and disastrous abortions. Both of the crime dramas were didactic in intent. One presented stories that illustrated points of law relating to obtaining money by deception, prostitution, and rights under the minimum wages legislation. The other had more of a cops-and-robbers flavor. It was produced for the Department of National Defense to impress upon the public that the law has a long arm and crime does not pay, and to bolster faith in Martial Law justice. Crimes detected and punished included theft, murder, and the manufacture of home-made guns. One of the fantasies was pure horror, dealing with ghosts, vampires, ghouls, black magic, hauntings, and the like. The other consisted of dramatizations of Philippine folk tales; it featured such figures as ancient gods, the spirits of streams and mountains, young men turned into snakes by an evil curse, and magical birds. Of the two 'other' dramas, one stressed the unfortunate consequences of sin, showing, for instance, how drunkenness or adultery could wreck the happiness of a family. The other portrayed the desirability of virtue: a woman answered a call from God to teach Christianity to the heathen, and the determination of another woman to be a good wife and mother brought happiness all round. A random sample of thirty plays from the CFA 'developmental' drama series was also analyzed for purposes of comparison. These had many similarities with the commercial dramas and were solidly within the Philippine soap opera tradition. Love and domestic relationships, for instance, often followed similar patterns to those in the love dramas. On the other hand, there was a greater variety of plot and subject-matter, and rather less sentimentality than in most of the other types. One story was about tenant farmers coming into conflict with their landlord over land reform, one about the struggles of a young couple from the country trying to settle down to city life, and another about efforts of villagers to build a bridge. The plays were all in the local language (Tagalog). A coding schedule was completed for each play after coders had listened to a tape recording
94
Studies in Comparative International Development / Fall-Winter 1979 Table 4 Themes by Type of Drama--Frequency LO~E,/ DOMESTIC
CRIME/ JUSTICE
FANTASY
Ma a
Mi b
Ma
Mi
Ma
Mi
Ma
Mi
IKa
Mi
Ma
Morality
I
h
I
I
2
3
3
2
7
10
3
2"
Power
0
1
0
O
0
1
I
0
I
2
I
2
Wealth
0
I
I
0
0
0
0
0
I
I
3
2
Prestige
I
I
O
O
O
O
O
0
I
I
O
h
Love/Ro~nce
AlL COMMERCIAL
OTHER
"DEVELOP. M~TAL" Mi
18
3
I
I
3
3
h
3
26
10
3
7
Family Relations
3
9
O
h
0
h
2
3
~
20
5
11
Friendship/
O
2
O
3
O
I
O
O
O
6
O
2
Justice
I
2
6
0
3
0
0
2
10
h
I
2
Idealism
O
0
I
0
O
O
0
0
I
O
0
2
Achievement
0
I
I
0
0
0
I
0
2
I
8
3
Knowledge
0
I
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
I
I
h
Supernatural /Religious
0
O
0
0
I
1
I
0
2
1
0
0
Supernatural /Non Religious
O
O
O
I
3
3
O
O
3
h
o
o
Loyalty
No. of plays
a.
Major
o.
MlnDr
2L
12
12
12
60
50
Major theme columns do not always add to totals because "other" themes not listed were written in by coders in so~ne cases.
of it. The analysis covered four main areas of content: underlying theme, subject matter, origin and resolution of the dramatic problem, and characters. In summarizing the results, the commercial dramas will be treated as a group, different types being distinguished only when this is necessary to the argument. The "theme" of the play was defined for coders as "the underlying meaning given to the action, what makes things tick" in the imaginary world of the play. The full list of themes (shown in Table 4) is based on an extension of those used by McGranahan and Wayne (1948) and by Goodlad (1971). As can be seen from the table, romantic love, justice, morality, and interpersonal relations were the main forces that moved the dramatic worlds portrayed in the commercial plays. The motivation of characters matched these themes; love, the quest for family harmony,
Popular Culture and Development
95
Table 5 Subject Matter by Type of Drama SUBJECT M A T T ~ (Aspects of llfe)
Love/romance
LOVE/ E~MESTIC
CRIME/ JUSTICE
FA~TA SY
--Maa
Ma
Mi
Ma
Mi
Mi b
ALL COMMERCIAL
OTHER
"DEVELOPM~CrAL"
Ma
Mi
Ma
Mi
Mm
Mi
18
3
I
2
h
I
6
}
29
7
5
8
1
3
1
I
2
1
~
2
8
7
6
5
z parent-child
5
6
I
I
I
I
3
5
I0
13
7
I0
i wider family
O
0
0
0
I
I
2
I
3
2
I
2
! inter family
0
I
0
0
0
3
0
I
0
5
2
3
Friendship
0
3
I
h
0
2
0
3
I
12
I
5
Farming
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
4
2
Land Tenure
O
0
0
0
0
0
0
O
O
0
I
2
Contraception
0
0
0
O
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
I
Health
O
O
I
O
O
O
O
I
1
I
I
I
Education
O
2
I
O
O
O
I
0
2
2
5
7
Housing
O
O
O
0
O
0
O
0
0
O
O
2
Poverty
0
h
I
0
0
0
0
0
I
J,
2
3
Unemployment
O
I
0
O
0
O
0
0
O
I
2
3
Work
0
0
0
I
0
0
0
0
0
I
2
I
Employment relations individual
0
I
I
0
0
0
0
0
I
I
2
3
: collective
0
0
O
O
0
O
0
O
O
O
I
O
: between employees
0
0
0
O
0
0
O
0
O
0
I
I
Small industries
0
0
O
O
O
0
0
0
O
0
2
O
Finance
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
I
2
Polltics - local
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
I
I
Politics - national
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
2
Crime
0
3
9
0
0
I
I
2
I0
6
0
War/military
0
0
0
O
0
0
O
O
0
0
0
0
Disaster
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
I
0
I
0
h
Religion
0
0
0
0
2
0
I
0
3
" 0
0
I
Minorities
0
0
0
0
0
I
0
I
0
2
I
0
Urban migration
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
I
2
Overseas migration
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
I
0
Family relations hasband-wlfe
No. of plays
a.
22
12
12
12
60
30
Major
b. Minor Some miscellaneous "other" aspects of life not ~isted were written in by coders, 8and are not shown here.
a quiet life, livelihood, or moral values were the main motives behind their actions. Subject matter was similarly limited, and the stories tended to concentrate heavily on romantic love, family relationships, and crime, as indicated in Table 5. Insofar as some of the plays served to explain legal rights or the system of justice, or to acquaint people with aspects of Philippine folk-lore long denigrated during the colonial period, they must be
96
Studies in Comparative International Development / Fall-Winter 1979
regarded as having some value for development. The general run of the material, however, lacked developmental characteristics. Specifically, the plays failed to deal with development-related topics or to offer an adequate analysis of development-related problems. They lacked social perspective and focused almost entirely on a psychological world of personal emotions and interpersonal relations. What then did this material have to offer listeners in the way of guidance that they claimed to derive from the plays? Taking the survey findings in conjunction with the content, it is clear that the main things that people were getting out of their drama listening were recipes for interpersonal adjustment, a degree of value reassurance, and some diversion that presumably helps to make life more bearable. But it does not follow from this that the bulk of the drama was therefore simply irrelevant to development. On the contrary, there is every reason to think that much of it was counter-developmental in character. For one thing, a great deal of the material had strong "consumerist" overtones through its portrayal of well-to-do, urban life-styles. But a point which is probably more important is that the broader message implicit in so much of the drama was one of passive resignation. This endorsement of fatalism was evident in most of the commercial material analyzed and was one of the main points emphasized by coders when they were asked to comment on the plays. As one said, " W h a t is offered in the stories is resignation to fate . . . . they have to be contented with their lot because there is a God that will help them." The same point can be made more forcefully in relation to the magical super-hero plays (although none were included in our sample because they were all serials at the time the analysis was carried out). The most popular of all the plays was about a young girl, Angelita, who had been given miraculous powers by the Virgin Mary, which she used to overcome evil. Some idea of its flavor may be gained from the comments of some of our survey respondents (who were avid listeners). Angelita is like a super-woman, fighting the Snake Woman and other evils in this world .. It gives me a lessonon life. The presenceof God is deeplyfelt here. Besides, she remindsus that DivineProvidencewill alwaysintervene... She uses her powers to assist the down-trodden,the poor, the victimsof injustice. . . . In the end she wins by using her fire-emittingeyes to burn her enemies .. The argument being made is not that material of this kind should have no place in cultural life--it is, after all, quite fun. It is the centrality of such material in one of the major popular cultural forms of a developing
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country that gives cause for concern. This kind of entertainment is often defended by its producers as being valuable because it reinforces moral values, upholds right over wrong, and portrays good as triumphing over evil. Beyond this, however, the broader message is carried in the way in which good triumphs: not by human action, or by any capacity to which listeners have recourse (though they may think they have), but by supernatural power. It is equivalent to telling them daily that there is nothing they can do themselves. This is hardly an invitation to "selfdevelopment." Once again, what is significant about the perspective on life offered by mainstream radio soap opera in the Philippines is the prominent position it occupies within popular culture. In comparison to this, the deliberately "developmental" communication--the farmers' programs, the spot-commercials on family planning and nutrition, the meet-the-people discussions with politicians--pale into insignificance. The "developmental" drama produced by CFA appeared from our analysis to be developmentally useful in comparison to the commercial material. The main points of difference were as follows. In general, the CFA plays were more varied in subject matter and more complex in structure. They were more often set in the countryside than the city, in contrast to the commercial material which had a heavy urban bias-suggesting that the city is really "where it's at." Most showed ordinary people, often poor, attempting to cope with everyday problems that had a bearing on national development. The commercial dramas had a far wealthier cast of characters with lifestyles and concerns rather different from those of the typical listener. Subject matter overlapped with that of the commercial drama but love and romance were less central, and stories relating to education, farming, poverty, unemployment, and work relationships were far more frequent in the developmental plays. This can be seen from Table 5, which also shows that some topics that were dealt with in the developmental drama never appeared, even as minor aspects, in the commercial material. These included farming, land tenure, industrial relations, the development of small industries, urban migration, contraception, and housing. The most prominent theme in the developmental series was achievement--in the sense of success, or fulfillment of some useful aim--which, as Table 4 shows, was barely touched in the commercial plays. Wealth (or the lack of it) was also shown as a prime determinant of the human condition in the developmental plays, and knowledge was presented as having significance. The characters also had more complex motivations and displayed a wider range of motives.
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The dramatic problems of the developmental dramas were far more often shown as deriving from social conditions and as being solved through communal action than in the commercial plays in which an individual focus was paramount. A related feature of the developmental plays was that their characters tended to be clearly identified socially and occupationally; most were ordinary rural people. Some of the commercial plays were very vague about what their characters did for a living; of those that could be identified, urban office workers formed the largest group. The main dramatic weakness of the developmental series was an element of luck that sometimes entered into the resolution of the plots. In spite of this, the world as portrayed in these plays amounted to a more adequate analysis of real life problems than that offered by the commercial drama; it had a sociological as well as a psychological dimension. Overall, the series offered a perspective on life in which fatalism appeared as unproductive, and it sought to suggest to its listeners that there are realistic and productive ways in which ordinary people can participate in solving the problems of underdevelopment. As our survey showed, attitudes both favorable and unfavorable to the goals of development coexist among the drama-listening audience. Whereas the tendency of the commercial plays was more often to pander to attitudes likely to obstruct development, the developmental series appealed to more constructive orientations, particularly the idea of self-help and the Filipino sense of community. In Wells' (1972) terminology, they were more consistent with "producerism" than the other plays, which more often had "consumerist," or fatalistic, orientations. WHEN IS COMMUNICATION DEVELOPMENTAL?
On the basis of the findings presented so far, two important points need to be made. The first concerns the importance of taking account of the value orientations of the general output of the entertainment media when considering the role of communication in development. The usefulness of the reformative or persuasive messages devised by "development communicators" may be greatly reduced or even nullified if the media culture in which they are embedded is saturated with counterdevelopmental values. If communications are to serve the needs of development, it would seem to be important to shape the communications to which most people attend most of the time, in ways that are consistent with developmental consciousness. To ignore these and concentrate solely on producing more and better farmers' programs, literacy campaigns, family planning, and health and nutrition messages could be
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a mistake. The value of a family planning radio message would seem questionable if it is sandwiched between two soap operas in which unrestricted fertility is presented as normal. In a similar way, advertisements urging people to save money and conserve resources may serve little purpose if the rest of the advertising encourages people to spend money and consume resources. These points would appear to be more or less self-evident; yet it remains commonplace for communications policy planners and researchers to behave as though such factors did not matter. The second point that emerges from the research is that it is apparently possible to produce "developmental" drama to which people actually enjoy listening. A rating of number four out of over one thousand daily half hours of radio broadcasting in Manila in August 1976 is significant (Consumer Research and Advertising Survey Report, 1976). This gives an answer to those broadcasters and other communicators who avoid anything with a "developmental" label attached to it on the ground that it must necessarily appear as preachy or boring. This is an attitude that helps to perpetuate the division that persists between mass communications as generally understood and "development communication" which still tends to be practiced (and researched) as a kind of poor relation of educational technology. 1 The particular developmental drama series studied in this research was not without its shortcomings and should not be thought of as the only possible kind of development drama, but its success shows that it is possible for popular entertainment material to embody developmental values. A major question still remains; namely, why there appears to be so little of positive developmental value in the commercial soap opera, considering that the declared policy of both the government and those responsible for broadcasting is to make broadcasting responsive to the needs of development. This policy includes the intention of reshaping radio drama along developmental lines. In the present research, the circumstances and processes of drama production were studied in order to try to explain why the general run of drama is like it is. A number of factors influence the nature of Philippine radio output, but the most important is the commercial constraints on the industry. Since broadcasting is mainly a business venture financed by advertising, in order to make money the broadcaster needs to attract the largest audience at the least cost. With intense competition from a large number of radio stations as well as from television, advertising rates are low. The need to attract audiences (which in turn attract advertisers) is strong. This results in a tendency to produce material with instant audience
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appeal. In the broadcasting of drama this means the tried and trusted formulae of the kind of material we have been considering: appealing to listeners' everyday concerns, exploiting fears and fantasies, and reinforcing prevailing attitudes, prejudices, and superstitions. Attempts to experiment with new formats or new subject matter, to present more demanding material, or to challenge listeners' preconceptions are effectively discouraged by the commercial demands of the business. Experimentation carries the risk of low audiences, and this is not a risk that can be taken lightly in the circumstances. The need to keep down costs operates in a similar way. From this point of view, the less time and personnel required to produce a drama the better. In practice a very high rate of output is maintained by means of a highly routinized form of production. All the pressures are in the direction of scripts that can be written more or less to formula; i.e., those that do not require research, that actors can master instantly with a minimum of rehearsal, and that can be put directly onto tape with little editing before, during, or after recording. The result is the type of popular drama discussed above. A further, but not unrelated, reason for the non-developmental or even counter-developmental character of the main drama output is the very limited conception of development and of the possibilities for developmental communication to be found among many of those engaged in radio production. At its worst, development is thought of as people doing what the government wants them to do (whatever that might be); development communication is seen as that which induces them to do this. Development communication tends therefore to be thought of as a type of advertising--as though development is to be sold like Coca-Cola. The idea of developmental drama tends to be conceived as a matter of producing the standard type of drama and finding some suitable opportunity within it to "inject the message" (the standard phrase), which means, in practice, to put advertising-like "messages" into the mouth of one of the characters. Some of the radio personnel with whom I was able to talk saw that this was likely to be perceived by listeners as propaganda and were (rightly) unenthusiastic about "developmental drama" for this reason. The idea that the values expressed through the story and plot of the drama itself might have implications for developmental consciousness among the audience is something that appears not to occur spontaneously to many people in the radio industry. Given the commercial constraints upon radio production and the associated limitations of prevailing conceptions of the possibilities of radio broadcasting, it needs to be asked how CFA, which produced the
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developmental drama studied in this research, was apparently able to escape the pressures that provide most of the "commercial" drama with doubtful or even negative developmental value. Apart from a more adequate conception of development within the CFA philosophy-including the notion o f " self-development' ' - - t h e main answer is to be found in the comparative freedom from commercial pressures afforded to the CFA production team by the effective subsidy provided by outside financial support. This has permitted experimentation with new formats and allowed more people to spend more time in the production of each play, including sometimes extensive research as well as careful studio production and editing. By normal commercial standards in the Philippines, all these things are comparative luxuries in radio drama production. Th.ere is of course no reason in principle why the kind of production values and practices that would result in the production of a more developmentally relevant type of soap opera should not themselves become routinized within the main drama-producing organizations and why, as a popular form of entertainment, drama should not come generally to embody values wholly consistent with and supportive of the "self-development" of ordinary people. In practice, both the built-in constraints of the heavily commercial nature of the Philippine radio industry, and the "advertising philosophy" of development communication that goes with it, make such an evolution unlikely on anything but a limited scale. As something inherited from the American colonial period, and the more recent neo-colonial phase, radio broadcasting was designed to serve commercial ends rather than developmental ends. And when the two conflict it is the former that are likely to take precedence. What we have is an instance of institutional transfer (Cruise O'Brien, 1975; Golding, 1977) in the sense of a type of organization with particular kinds of goals, values, procedures, and ideas about the role and function of broadcasting, being exported from a developed to an underdeveloped country. One does not have to be a crude economic determinist to recognize that when the economic underpinning of a syste m of cultural production is closely intermeshed with the fortunes of the urban commercial sector of a poor country--as is the case with radio in the Philippines--all pressures are in the direction of the reproduction of consumerist rather than producerist values, and that this is likely to occur despite contrary intentions on the part of those involved in the process of production itself. One also does not have to import cultural products t h e m s e l v e s - - m u s i c , films, television programs, for
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instance--to generate or sustain cultural values that may be harmful to development; it is quite possible to import only a particular system of production and market organization in order to produce equally harmful home-grown products. NOTES Grateful acknowledgement is made to the Communication Foundation for Asm, and to Dr. Gloria Feliciano and the staff and students of the Institute of Mass Commumcanon of the University of the Philippines for their cooperation, advice, and assistance which made the research possible 1. It would appear that developmental drama comparable to that described here has been produced in the form of "telenovellas" m Brazil and other parts of Latin America, though I am not aware of any systematic research to assess the developmental relevance of these products.
REFERENCES BLUMLER, J.G , and E KATZ, (eds.) 1974 The Uses of Mass CommunicaUons; Current Perspectives on Gratifications Research Beverly Htlls. Sage. Book of the Phihppmes 1976 Manila: Research and Analysis Centre for Communications, and Aardvark Associates Inc Commumcators m the Philippines 1975 Manila. National Office of Mass Media. Consumer Research and Advertising Survey Report 1976 Greater Manila Coincidental Radio Survey, August 23-28 Manila: CORE-AD. CRU1SE O'BRIEN, R. 1975 "Dommatton and Dependence m Mass Commumcation." Institute of Development Studies Bulletin 6(4) 85-99 DORFMAN, A., and A. MATTELART 1975 How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic. New York: International General GOLDING, P. 1977 "Media Professionahsm m the Third World The transfer of an ideology." In Curran, J , M. Gurevltch and J. Woolacott (eds.), Mass Communication and Society London Edward Arnold. GOODLAD, J.S.R. 1971 A Sociology of Popular Drama London. Hememann. HARRIS, P. 1974 "Hierarchy and Concentration in International News Flow " Politics IX (2): 159165. HERZOG, HERTA 1941 " O n Borrowed Experience "" Studies m Phdosophy and Social Science 9 65-95 KATZ, E , and G WEDELL 1978 Broadcasting in the Third World: Promise and Performance. London: Macmdlan MAGLAIANG, D.M (ed.). 1976 From the Village to the Medmm. Manila. Communication Foundation for Asia. McGRANAHAN, D.V., and I WAYNE 1948 "German and American traits reflected in popular drama " Human Relations 1: 429-455. McQUAIL, D., J.G. BLUMLER, and J R. BROWN 1972 "The Television Audience: A Revised Perspective.'" In McQuail, D. (ed.), Sociology of Mass Communications Harmondsworth. Penguin Books.
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PHILIPPINE MASS COMMUNICATION RESEARCH SOCIETY 1977 Greater Manila Quantitative Coincidental Radio Survey, March 1977. Manila: PMCRS. ROGERS, E.M. 1976 "Communication and Development: The passing of the dominant paradigm." Communication Research 3: 213-240. SCHILLER, H. 1976 Communicationand Cultural Dominanon. White Plains: International Arts and Sciences Press. SCHRAMM, W., and D. LERNER (eds.) 1976 Communicationand Change: The last ten years--and the next. Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. TEHERANIAN, M., F. HAKIMZADEH, and M.L. VIDALE, (eds.) 1977 Communications Policy for Nauonal Development: A comparative perspective. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. TUNSTALL, J. 1977 The Media are American:Anglo-Americanmedia in the world. London: Constable. WELLS, A. 1972 Picture-TubeImpenahsm. New York: Orbls Books.
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