Maria Luisa F. Tortes 
 
 
made popular then. This form is characterized by a lot of presentational

gestures and stylized movements, action being largely a demonstration 
of the ancient Filipino martial arts called amis de mano and a lot of sword

and dagger fights, called batalla. The tibag and panunulyan are religious

dramatizations performed during the Holy Week which formed part of the 
overall effort to christianize the natives. 
     American colonialism beginning in 1898 found in this theater 
 elements that could make subjugation easier and more effective in the 
 interest of global economic expansionism. But while Spain used religion

 as a major instrument of domination, the United States used the 
 educational system it so eagerly set up right at the start for its own 
 hegemonic end. And while they both used coercive power to pacify the 
 Filipinos, the US used more sophisticated strategies of colonization, 
 specifically, through the introduction of the English language which 
 would soon become the country's official language. The Filipinos were 
 taught to value everything American: A is for Apple, G is for Grapes, 
 bringing in an alien cultute and creating new artificial needs to 
 perpetuate a lopsided economic relationship in which the Philippines 
 became the traditional exporter of raw materials and importer of surplus

 finished goods from the US. American colonialist strategy found the 
 ideological mystification of the Spanish era only too useful so that it

 reinforced the same ethics of the good and evil, the universal order of

 society even as that same colonialist strategy embodied its own 
historical Victorian impulses. With the muchballyhooed pronounce- 
ments like "Manifest Destiny" and "Benevolent Assimilation"
among the 
major slogans of the American expansionists, the mystification of 
imperialist domination was clearly at work. The sarsuwela, which 
supplanted the komedya, became popular during the early years of 
American colonialism although it had been introduced in the Philippines 
by the Spaniards in the late 19th century. It revolves around the 
intricacies of domestic life, usually revolving around a love story which

focuses on a big-hearted hero and a heartless villain. The drama is 
usually of a smaller scale in relation to the full-length, whole-day, non-

stop dimension of the sinakulo, sarsuwela and komedya. Either comic 
or melodramatic, the drama is characterized by improbable twists and 
turns in the fate of the kind, trusting, pure, faithful but betrayed hero.
In 
the bodabil (from the French and American vaudeville) which became 
one of the dominant entertainment means in the early years of American 
rule, Philippine audiences were regaled with a hodgepodge of skits, 
songs and dances reminiscent of the earlier sarsuwela, or even the 
komedya. Through the bodabil, the audience were not only kept in touch 
with the latest in fashion in songs, dresses and dances from the US; by 
its sheer dominance in the social life of the people, the bodabil 
displaced the revolutionary spirit that had energized them only a decade

ago or so. The bodabil could not have been a mere replication of the 
French or American vaudeville: it integrated elements of the traditional

dramatic forms and embodied the impulses of earlier theater genre as in 
the drama. Thus, the theatrical traditions of a feudal mode ultimately 
rooted as they were in the communal pre-colonial rituals of a self- 
sufficient economy, served the ends of foreign domination, mystifying 
 
 
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