paano ba.
maipaparamdam
ang pag-ibig
ko.
sa iyo
maging sapat ba.
ang pagbigkas ng iyong pangalan
ang pagdantay ng labi sa iyong pisngi
ang paghawak sa kamay sa paglubog ng araw
ang tumula’t manalinghaga
tungkol sa bulaklak at alaala
ang mag-alay ng uyayi
nang mapawi ang luha
sa pagdating ng takipsilim
bibilangin ko ang lahat ng tala
hahanapin ko ang pinakamalaya
nang ang puso ko.
iaalay.
sa iyo.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
JUICYLICIOUS, CRISPYLICIOUS. MY SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION OF JOLLIBEE
This is my first paper for my Introduction to Sociological Perspectives Class. The instruction was just to write about a social phenomenon and try to apply the C. Wright Mills’ Sociological Imagination in three pages. Thus, formal discussion of structure and theory was not being asked. I wrote the piece before reading McDonaldization of Society to test if I still had my sociologist in me. In terms of the writing style, I experimented on the creative non-fiction type of essay to have that personal and not-so-technical feel.
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JUICYLICIOUS, CRISPYLICIOUS. MY SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION OF JOLLIBEE
Boom Enriquez, MA Sociology
Ever since I was a kid, my favorite fast food chain to eat to is Jollibee. The Jollibee fried chicken was and still is my favorite. Before even Aga Mulach started endorsing the chicken, I dreamed of having my chicken, rice and gravy after a successful academic quarter when I was in grade school. As I got older and bigger, so was my appetite. My order became 2-piece chicken, 2 cups of rice and gravy. Together with my high school barkada, we ‘triked (rode a tricycle) off’ to Katipunan Avenue to nourish our hungry stomachs every week.
As I matured, I went back to my roots. It was as if I was going home to Pampanga when Jollibee introduced the fiesta meal. For a month, my college friend, Jay, and I literally dined in everyday just to order the pancit palabok, fried chicken, rice and gravy. We called that being our ‘Jabee dates’ as we went our way just to eat that it got worse to the point that our girlfriends got jealous of what we were doing.
Today, my capacity and desire to eat as much as before dwindled, but still the non-negotiable is still the Jolly chicken.
C. Wright Mills has invited everyone to look at the personal trouble (in this case, personal delight) to look beyond the private experience and see the relations of it to the bigger whole. Structural changes in history and institutions have furthered affected the personal man, making the personal trouble a symptom of an underlying issue in the public space.
Mills encourages us to privatize the publics and publicize the privates. He states, “no problems of 'the private life' can be stated and solved without recognition of the crisis of ambition that is part of the very career of people at work in the incorporated economy”. With that, it is no doubt that the consumption of a fried chicken or a grilled burger in a fast food set-up represents a much bigger phenomenon and it has been embedded in the Filipino lifestyle.
The fast food era has embodied modernization. Filipino values of family, leisure, ritual and food culture have been profoundly affected with the development of the fast food industry the past few decades. Together with the entry of multi-national corporations, the fast food industry’s contribution to the economic growth (or un-growth) has paved the way in the development of the Filipino’s modern pacing and lifestyle.
Time. Mealtime has been industrialized. Before, the chefs, cooks and mothers picked vegetables in their gardens, and bought chunks of meat from the market. Now, machines and an assembly line cuts, stores, fries and serves the chicken, cutting the preparation of the meal into minutes. For a fast paced kind of lifestyle in the modern urban era, even eating should keep with the pace.
Cooking is supposed to be an art. Timing of the ripeness/rawness, presentation, taste, color and other factors contribute in creating unique cuisines. Yet with the fast food stores, cooking is a step-by-step process like making toothpaste in a manufacturing company. The food is no longer the cook’s creation; rather, it becomes a product of the company.
Taste. Fast food is to make you full more than to make you satisfied. Standardization of the taste comes into play. The Jolly chicken in Manila tastes like the Jolly chicken in Cebu.
Natural and nutrition now take a back seat with preservatives and other non-healthy materials are put into the food for storage and restoration. To induce the real taste of food, it has to have other additives that may not be healthy for the body. As in modernization, there are so many additions to somehow emulate to what is perceived to be as a normal lifestyle.
Family Bonding. The dynamics of the Filipino family has also been affected with the emergence of the fast food industry. Mealtime, before, was a family ritual, which was usually done at home. Traditionally, everyone helps in the cooking and preparation of the meal, and then everyone sits down to partake in the meal.
Now, home is just another option for the family to choose as eating space. There is a de-ritiualization of the meal. With lunch having to be consumed for a specific number of minutes because there are others waiting for the occupancy of the seats, conversations over mealtime is no longer practiced. Family bonding needs to create other spaces as lunches are reduced to food consumptions.
Consumption. “Is that all, sir?” That is the standard line of the person at the point of sale whenever I finish ordering. It may just be a clarificatory question making sure that they have gotten the orders right. But in the modern capitalist society, it is an encouragement to order and consume more.
There are different sizes of burgers, fries, and drinks. There are different sizes of amounts, from the small, medium, large to today’s biggie, venti and grande sizes. Fast food chains maintain the capitalistic notion of consumption, encouraging the Filipino to spend ‘bigger’. The practice is to make a certain combination of food, either I like everything on it or not, making this as a packaged meal. This is supposed to be cheaper as compared as to buying separate entities.
Media. Media plays a big part in the consumeristic culture that we have. The television is as powerful as it has never been, making the air space very expensive and lucrative. Who else would embody Jollibee but by one of the most handsome Filipino actors in history, Aga Mulach? His recall is undisputable. From the Bagets days to now him being a family man at 40, his star power is immeasurable.
Every male dreams of being Aga and by eating what he endorses, the Filipino male hopes to capture even the tiniest bit of his beauty. With his beautiful family tugging along, the Filipino family is driven to consume what the Mulach family consumes.
Food culture. Jollibee has reached all economic statuses in the Philippines. Whenever I go home in the province, my cousins, nephews and nieces ask me to bring them to the nearest Jollibee store so they can eat fried chicken and sweet spaghetti. I would rather prefer to eat the authentic Kapampangan home-cooked meal. But for them, eating at Jollibee is as good as eating a fine dining meal.
Status. The fast food; therefore, helps in dictating the socio-economic class. The filthy rich do not go to such food chains. They do not consider it as food. The bourgeoisie eats at chains regularly to maintain their fast-paced lifestyle. As for the lower class, eating at fast food chains is a reward that they eat there if there are reasons to spend more than they usually spend.
Globalization. The company’s website states, “[Jollibee] is a stronghold of heritage and monument of the Filipino victory”. In a sense, Jollibee becomes a status symbol for the country. Just like Manny Pacquiao, the Jollibee is a symbol of triumph, specifically, a conquest over the colonizer, which is symbolized by Mc Donald’s. In all of the countries, I have read somewhere that the Philippines is the only country wherein McDonald’s is just second to the market leader. It has tried to reinvent its menu, localize its campaigns and yet through all these years, the Filipinos still come more to Jollibee.
To add to that, Jollibee has ridden globalization that there are 50 international food chains in other countries. Notable here is the popularity of the Los Angeles branch, which I hear is doing well. Does this symbolize an attempt to colonize the former colonizer? Does this penetration of the US market represent a turn-of-the-table type of assimilation? Having so many Filipinos in the California area, does the Filipino, through its food culture, influence the food culture of the Americans? Together with the Diaspora of the Filipino workers, can we call this the Filipinization of the world?
I don’t believe that my frequency for fast food will be lessened through this discussion. I, as a regular-wage earner, cannot afford to go to fine dining restaurants always as the others do. In addition, the fast food concept complements the pacing of my city life vis-à-vis my personal life. It is, therefore, a challenge for me to continue reflecting upon this personal delight of mine and provide further inquiry to the public issue it has profoundly developed in the culture of the contemporary Filipino.
Sources
• Jollibee. Retrieved last June 30, 2009 from http://www.jollibee.com.ph/.
• Mills, C. Wright. The Sociological Imagination (1959). Retrieved last June 30, 2009 from http://legacy.lclark.edu/~goldman/socimagination.html.
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JUICYLICIOUS, CRISPYLICIOUS. MY SOCIOLOGICAL IMAGINATION OF JOLLIBEE
Boom Enriquez, MA Sociology
Ever since I was a kid, my favorite fast food chain to eat to is Jollibee. The Jollibee fried chicken was and still is my favorite. Before even Aga Mulach started endorsing the chicken, I dreamed of having my chicken, rice and gravy after a successful academic quarter when I was in grade school. As I got older and bigger, so was my appetite. My order became 2-piece chicken, 2 cups of rice and gravy. Together with my high school barkada, we ‘triked (rode a tricycle) off’ to Katipunan Avenue to nourish our hungry stomachs every week.
As I matured, I went back to my roots. It was as if I was going home to Pampanga when Jollibee introduced the fiesta meal. For a month, my college friend, Jay, and I literally dined in everyday just to order the pancit palabok, fried chicken, rice and gravy. We called that being our ‘Jabee dates’ as we went our way just to eat that it got worse to the point that our girlfriends got jealous of what we were doing.
Today, my capacity and desire to eat as much as before dwindled, but still the non-negotiable is still the Jolly chicken.
C. Wright Mills has invited everyone to look at the personal trouble (in this case, personal delight) to look beyond the private experience and see the relations of it to the bigger whole. Structural changes in history and institutions have furthered affected the personal man, making the personal trouble a symptom of an underlying issue in the public space.
Mills encourages us to privatize the publics and publicize the privates. He states, “no problems of 'the private life' can be stated and solved without recognition of the crisis of ambition that is part of the very career of people at work in the incorporated economy”. With that, it is no doubt that the consumption of a fried chicken or a grilled burger in a fast food set-up represents a much bigger phenomenon and it has been embedded in the Filipino lifestyle.
The fast food era has embodied modernization. Filipino values of family, leisure, ritual and food culture have been profoundly affected with the development of the fast food industry the past few decades. Together with the entry of multi-national corporations, the fast food industry’s contribution to the economic growth (or un-growth) has paved the way in the development of the Filipino’s modern pacing and lifestyle.
Time. Mealtime has been industrialized. Before, the chefs, cooks and mothers picked vegetables in their gardens, and bought chunks of meat from the market. Now, machines and an assembly line cuts, stores, fries and serves the chicken, cutting the preparation of the meal into minutes. For a fast paced kind of lifestyle in the modern urban era, even eating should keep with the pace.
Cooking is supposed to be an art. Timing of the ripeness/rawness, presentation, taste, color and other factors contribute in creating unique cuisines. Yet with the fast food stores, cooking is a step-by-step process like making toothpaste in a manufacturing company. The food is no longer the cook’s creation; rather, it becomes a product of the company.
Taste. Fast food is to make you full more than to make you satisfied. Standardization of the taste comes into play. The Jolly chicken in Manila tastes like the Jolly chicken in Cebu.
Natural and nutrition now take a back seat with preservatives and other non-healthy materials are put into the food for storage and restoration. To induce the real taste of food, it has to have other additives that may not be healthy for the body. As in modernization, there are so many additions to somehow emulate to what is perceived to be as a normal lifestyle.
Family Bonding. The dynamics of the Filipino family has also been affected with the emergence of the fast food industry. Mealtime, before, was a family ritual, which was usually done at home. Traditionally, everyone helps in the cooking and preparation of the meal, and then everyone sits down to partake in the meal.
Now, home is just another option for the family to choose as eating space. There is a de-ritiualization of the meal. With lunch having to be consumed for a specific number of minutes because there are others waiting for the occupancy of the seats, conversations over mealtime is no longer practiced. Family bonding needs to create other spaces as lunches are reduced to food consumptions.
Consumption. “Is that all, sir?” That is the standard line of the person at the point of sale whenever I finish ordering. It may just be a clarificatory question making sure that they have gotten the orders right. But in the modern capitalist society, it is an encouragement to order and consume more.
There are different sizes of burgers, fries, and drinks. There are different sizes of amounts, from the small, medium, large to today’s biggie, venti and grande sizes. Fast food chains maintain the capitalistic notion of consumption, encouraging the Filipino to spend ‘bigger’. The practice is to make a certain combination of food, either I like everything on it or not, making this as a packaged meal. This is supposed to be cheaper as compared as to buying separate entities.
Media. Media plays a big part in the consumeristic culture that we have. The television is as powerful as it has never been, making the air space very expensive and lucrative. Who else would embody Jollibee but by one of the most handsome Filipino actors in history, Aga Mulach? His recall is undisputable. From the Bagets days to now him being a family man at 40, his star power is immeasurable.
Every male dreams of being Aga and by eating what he endorses, the Filipino male hopes to capture even the tiniest bit of his beauty. With his beautiful family tugging along, the Filipino family is driven to consume what the Mulach family consumes.
Food culture. Jollibee has reached all economic statuses in the Philippines. Whenever I go home in the province, my cousins, nephews and nieces ask me to bring them to the nearest Jollibee store so they can eat fried chicken and sweet spaghetti. I would rather prefer to eat the authentic Kapampangan home-cooked meal. But for them, eating at Jollibee is as good as eating a fine dining meal.
Status. The fast food; therefore, helps in dictating the socio-economic class. The filthy rich do not go to such food chains. They do not consider it as food. The bourgeoisie eats at chains regularly to maintain their fast-paced lifestyle. As for the lower class, eating at fast food chains is a reward that they eat there if there are reasons to spend more than they usually spend.
Globalization. The company’s website states, “[Jollibee] is a stronghold of heritage and monument of the Filipino victory”. In a sense, Jollibee becomes a status symbol for the country. Just like Manny Pacquiao, the Jollibee is a symbol of triumph, specifically, a conquest over the colonizer, which is symbolized by Mc Donald’s. In all of the countries, I have read somewhere that the Philippines is the only country wherein McDonald’s is just second to the market leader. It has tried to reinvent its menu, localize its campaigns and yet through all these years, the Filipinos still come more to Jollibee.
To add to that, Jollibee has ridden globalization that there are 50 international food chains in other countries. Notable here is the popularity of the Los Angeles branch, which I hear is doing well. Does this symbolize an attempt to colonize the former colonizer? Does this penetration of the US market represent a turn-of-the-table type of assimilation? Having so many Filipinos in the California area, does the Filipino, through its food culture, influence the food culture of the Americans? Together with the Diaspora of the Filipino workers, can we call this the Filipinization of the world?
I don’t believe that my frequency for fast food will be lessened through this discussion. I, as a regular-wage earner, cannot afford to go to fine dining restaurants always as the others do. In addition, the fast food concept complements the pacing of my city life vis-à-vis my personal life. It is, therefore, a challenge for me to continue reflecting upon this personal delight of mine and provide further inquiry to the public issue it has profoundly developed in the culture of the contemporary Filipino.
Sources
• Jollibee. Retrieved last June 30, 2009 from http://www.jollibee.com.ph/.
• Mills, C. Wright. The Sociological Imagination (1959). Retrieved last June 30, 2009 from http://legacy.lclark.edu/~goldman/socimagination.html.
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