About 25 years ago , The Ring was doing well in the American box office. The Ring was originally a Japanese movie (1998) that did so well on its own Hollywood made their own version just like what they did with movies like Scent of a Woman and True Lies . The source material was actually a 1991 novel Ring by Koji Suzuki. I had this officemate at the time who asked me something that never left me. ” How long has Hollywood been doing that to Asian films?” Well, quick history lesson Akira Kurosawa movies have resulted in influencing movies that you may have heard of like The Magnificent Seven, A Fistful of Dollars, Last Man Standing and this movie that came out in 1977 called Star Wars.
My coworker used the adjective Asian instead of Japanese because he wanted to somehow anchor himself and his culture to the success. That is the story of the Filipino culture. They love what they can make at home but die to have it accepted abroad and they can’t realize that the domestic audience and their low standards is a big part of the problem in their pursuit of their holy grail of pansin. This very issue is what got me fired up to write for GetRealPhilippines in the first place. Maybe a critique of GRP can be that a few of us keep saying the same thing. Well you can only tell the truth one way. If we were right a decade and a half ago , should things have improved by now?? I was inspired by the ghost of Moe Berg to review some physics and I concluded that if Pinoy culture got into a head on collision with The Second Law of Thermodynamics , my miniscule amount of money will be on the physics principle . To paraphrase Benigno : in a whole country of 116 million , we can’t find two people to actually play in the World Cup? This culture is not going to change the laws of physics.
| SUPPORT INDEPENDENT SOCIAL COMMENTARY! Subscribe to our Substack community GRP Insider to receive by email our in-depth free weekly newsletter. Subscribe to our Substack newsletter, GRP Insider! Learn more |
The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that the total entrophy (a measure of disorder) of an isolated system can only increase over time or remain constant, but it never decreases. Face it, our culture is full of disorder. The entrophy will not be going away or even decreasing anytime soon because natural processes tend to move toward greater disorder and less available energy.Greater disorder, that is us. But of course this society is a bit like Nero. They chant proud to be pinoy !!! as this all happens.
Little hint , everybody around the world cares about the American box office and the box office of their own country. Not much else. Usually most people around the world feel they have arrived if they can get one of their actors in the Hollywood loop. Antonio Banderas knew so little English. Ana de Armas was born in Cuba and worked in Cuba, worked her way to Spain and worked her way to Hollywood films. I really don’t care to look it up but I remember the husband of Sunshine Cruz at the time really thinking he had turned the corner and discussing his plans openly to the local press. He was bragging about being treated as an equal to Benjamin Bratt on the set of The Great Raid and he had his foot in the door. As usual , Pinoy showbusiness folk think so much of themselves and their output yet only reach OFWs abroad. I am extremely pessimistic that one day a movie that gets shown in the Metro Manila Film Festival will one day get remade in Hollywood and achieve blockbuster status.
When it comes to entertainment produced in this country , all you have to do is be baduy . When you are baduy you appeal to the baduy . When you do that you sell theater tickets , you sell tickets to PBA games and you get TV ratings on prime time TV . Mass media is a reflection of the audience it hopes to attract. Listen to the radio, watch mainstream locally produced TV and watch a movie during the Christmas season. Close your eyes and listen to the news anchors and you really can’t tell me those are professional journalists. WWE commentators maybe but not sober journalism. There is a reason why Walkter Cronkite was not born in the Philippines. It is all there. The problem is you crave world wide attention and what you produce with what you have ain’t getting it done. I looked up baduy in Merriam Webster and I could not find it. I came up with my own definition born in a crossfire hurricane and years of cringing at local media.
There is an open debate going on if the Los Angeles Dodgers are bad for baseball. You may look how much all the teams spent on the recently concluded Major League Baseball season here. The Dodgers spent the most and even that number is deceiving. Shohei Ohtani signed a $700 million 10 year contract that only pays $2 million a year while he is in uniform of the Dodgers and the rest of it will kick in 9 years and keep paying until Bimby Yap is 36 years old. The beauty of AI is I can look that up and without seeing his birthday or even his current age.
So the Dodgers spent a lot of money but the question is where did it go?
“Saturday’s thrilling 5-4, 11-inning victory over the Toronto Blue Jays further justified the Dodgers’ recent heavy spending. Pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who signed a 12-year, $325 million deal after the 2023 season, recorded the last out on zero days’ rest and earned World Series MVP honors. Shohei Ohtani, he of the 10-year, $700 million contract, led the Dodgers with a .333 average, three homers, and a 1.278 OPS. “
Quoting the Fansided article.
Don’t take my word for it. The Dodgers committed over a billion dollars to two Japanese born and bred players. They were both playing for professional teams in Japan and the Dodgers had to compensate their teams for letting them go. You may recall pinoy basketball coaches who cry over “genetics” makes for good blogging. If the Japanese people and their social institutions can produce two athletes that warrant a billion dollars of the Los Angeles Dodgers money why can’t the pinoys? Last I looked , not one pinoy born and raised here is making a cent from playing in the highest levels of baseball, soccer and basketball. Well for one thing the Japanese are both cerebral and disciplined. Back in 2013 I wrote a piece explaining that since baseball is a “thinking man’s sport” then it would by definition preclude pinoys as both participants and viewers. Pinoys may not be known for their noontime TV but they exist on it. Not exactly a place where cerebral prowess and discipline are on display.
The Japanese tangibly support a very diverse local sport scene. The fanwidth of the pinoy sportsfan on the other hand is extremely narrow. Yet they have the broadest expectations of pansin and success. The Philippines as a nation booed the snot out of Chot Reyes . The point I made when I wrote this is that sports is so lame here that he is the only one in this country worth booing. Pressure is a privilege. Sure the PBA has fans but since the league is Manila centric , you will never get the booing or even the cheering when you are playing in front of a partisan crowd. Booing is a good thing since the alternative is apathy. Empty seats don’t boo. I have enjoyed sports for decades in leagues that Filipinos do not make a dent in. The world of sports goes on where the best of the best compete without Filipinos. Manny is the classic case of the exception that proves the rule. I mention the Japanese sports scene because here are pictures of four different sports venues and three of them are devoted to one sport. The baseball stadiums and the rugby stadium are outdoors and are cavernous compared to anything in the Philippines. Not that there is much need since pinoys do not really care about sports but will throw a parade for the Malditas and put them in Vogue Philippines. With the exception of the stadium in Yokohama , the remaining three venues are right next to each other. Facilities are a manifestation of fanwidth. I really doubt a foreign tourist ever existed that went to Manila and took pictures of Rizal Coliseum and marveled how there was nothing like that in his/ her home country.
Key details: This is considered the spiritual home of Japanese rugby union.
In the 2025 World Series and in the payroll of the 2025 Los Angeles Dodgers, we saw how significant Japanese born players were. This does not happen overnight. Instead of boring you with league names and dates that will bore anyone who is neither a Japanese person or a baseball fan allow me to digress again into film. Stray Dog ( 1949) is an earlier film of the aforementioned Kurosawa. The movie was groundbreaking for its time. Very early police movie that combined contrasting detectives ( young and old) partnering up. It also showcased Tokyo and Japan as it was four years after the war ended. Impoverished and desperate after surrendering on an aircraft carrier and having two of its cities bombed in a way cities have never been bombed before. They didn’t have to build sets or hire extras. This movie was set in present day 1949. Warts and all.
What I also found interesting is that despite all that there is a scene of a crowd attending a baseball game. It seems to be a real game in a real stadium. There was no AI at the time and I doubt they could have staged the scene. Baseball was part of their culture back then. Japan will see better days decades later but despite all the suffering, a baseball game was the choice for escapism. It is that devotion that allowed two of their players to sign a billion dollars worth of contracts many years later. It has always been part of their culture and it will always boggle my mind how little we pay attention to sports in this country yet are willing to scrounge for any kind of acceptance in the outside world regardless of origin.
Some people speak truth to power. I speak truth to the KSP of this nation. Pinoys have a history of going gaga over people who they believe represent them even if they either never spent one second here or only came here since they are given a shot at something like the World Cup that they normally would not in their own country given their talent level. Pinoys celebrate the Women’s World Cup . They had a parade but none of them cared that their local institutions had nothing to do with it . All the people that actually saw the field in the World Cup even for 1 minute did not spend 1 minute of their formative years in the Philippines. So no local schools , no local playgrounds, nothing. The Japanese mentality is the polar opposite. Naomi Osaka was winning majors and the Japanese did not find her Japanese enough. Well the pinoys counter that with the way they normally do: get excited over their low standards. They cheer on somebody who grew up in a country with a flimsy connection to the Philippines. They cheer on pinoys who excel in TV shows that they never watch shot countries that they do not care about.
I want to create the great Filipino novel. A flaw in my plan is that Filipinos don’t read. Another flaw in my plan is I tried to ask AI to make me a picture of the great Filipino novel and it asked if I was referring to Noli Me Tangere. Wasn’t that over 140 years ago? Oh yeah , I already forgot about flaw #1. Yeah and we are the same people trying to crucify Dan Brown. For what it is worth then here is the premise: an alien force invades the world and the world has a slim chance to repel the invaders. This can only be accomplished if all the nations in the world work together and do everything for the common good. Just when things start to look a bit optimistic the pinoys mess everything up by injecting pinoy pride. When the aliens open up the hatch of their ship like in the movie Close Encounters , they are greeted with yells of ” proud to be pinoy!!” The Filipino contingent worry more about getting credit and attention from the invading aliens than saving the planet. They also conveniently forget that they don’t deserve to be on the top of the food chain among the nations of the Earth since what do they know about repelling invaders? Well Rome was not built in a day.
Bear with me on another one of my imperfect analogies. In the Star Trek Universe, the Borg were a synthesis of living organisms that absorb the bodies and intellect of other living creatures. The endgame with this cumulative “Collective” was to achieve perfection. We do have our Borg here. Here is where my analogy almost falls apart. I see no pursuit of intellect or even perfection. I see no effort in assimilation. Our Borg are the gatekeepers of our culture that eschew reading and consuming sports other than basketball. Pansin though is always forefront with our Collective. Their mantra is not ” resistance is futile” , they instead chant ” Proud to be Pinoy!”
- The Los Angeles Dodgers Win Without A Cent Going To A Filipino - November 6, 2025
- If You Will Blame Geography And Genetics Then Are You Worthy To Play With The Big Boys? - August 21, 2025
- Super Bowl Monday Why It Might Be Fun Even For You - January 24, 2025