Anthropology and the AlDub Nation: Entertainment as Politics and Politics as Entertainment

• Main Author: Pertierra, Raul
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2016
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/phstudies/vol64/iss2/7; https://archium.ateneo.edu/context/phstudies/article/4155/viewcontent/6303.pdf
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

The links between politics and entertainment in the Philippines are well known, but few have noted these links in the media phenomenon known as AlDub. As a subpart of Eat Bulaga, a long-standing midday TV show, AlDub has gained a life of its own, giving its actors national and even global prominence. How was this possible? Was it happenstance or do basic interests and structures explain its popularity? A deep ethnographic account of how popular culture is generated, reproduced, and consumed reveals its anchoring in material structures the interests of which are often disguised or unacknowledged. Anthropology provides a way of exploring such interests and structures.Keywords: ethnography • politics of fandom • hegemony • material culture • technological mediations