If there is one industry on earth we are all enjoying and experiencing, it is my field. You watch us, read us, listen to us, dance to us, sing with us, wear us, eat us, purchase us, even seek our advice; and we make you happy, angry, sad, frustrated, fearful, and even tearful.
La La Land, according to Webster is “a euphoric dreamlike mental state detached from the harsher realities of life,” “the mental state of someone who isn’t aware of what is really happening.” It is difficult but exciting to be an academic and scholar in La La Land because certainly, one can be considered ‘impractical’, ‘irrelevant’, and ‘theoretical’ in a world that has become fast and instant, loud, noisy, grandstanding, broadcasting, and over-the-top.
Under this framework, there simply is not enough time for reflection. It is difficult to be a rational and social being in La La Land because certainly, one can be perceived as an abstract ivory tower sort of individual. I can’t say I am always practical and relevant. I’ve had my share of grandstanding. I can’t say I haven’t also messed up the path to proper inquiry, muddling hypothesis and theory with conjecturing and sweeping logic. I can’t say I’m not abstract; in fact, I am and rather enjoy it. I consider it a privilege to have been able to turn this hobby of reflection into a career. I just write about the world; others have to save it. I’ve been given the privilege of an environment suited to reflection to recognize the path to proper inquiry—a path and journey that isn’t without the same struggles as the citizens of La La Land. I shall demonstrate with my own experience by critiquing my struggle to become “scholarly” in my attempt to make sense of La La Land. More particularly, I will be focusing on my classes and research.
Understanding Media and Its Content is about basic communication principles and media history. It is about getting students to understand themselves and their relationship with media. Then, they move on to Communication Theory, where they are taught to read, understand, and analyze information and messages in everyday media and the life of the times as a consequence of media. Emphasis is on the significance of context and the practice of framing. In the end, they are expected to develop their own theory, which must be grounded on existing communication theories, inspired by case studies and issues that have involved the media—such as who really is aggressive and wants war in the rhetoric surrounding Iran and Russia; or what is the likely basis and reason for the Israeli and Palestinian conflict. What is the real story here as evidenced by geography and history? The course is about gaining an awareness of the world outside themselves and realizing what might seem frivolous and light (such as pop culture, advertising, and the movies) make and write history; thus, the pressure to be this [ethical]. Finally, they take Communication Research, where they are taught to be grounded more formally. We begin with the general premise that the greatest global threat is the illusion of truth. Our general concern is the pursuit of truth.
In academia, it is a staple to reference all your sources. Simply saying “sources” makes a point an opinion, hearsay, rumor, perhaps even fiction. The same rules should apply in journalism and media, as the same rules should apply to everyday interpersonal levels of communication. If a person claims secrecy and anonymity in the effort to provide proof, then the reasonable should ask questions. The value of a claim goes up from hypothesis to theory to fact, depending on the marriage between a sensible rationale and the empirical evidence provided. Finally, we evaluate an idea on the basis of the following principles: human freedom, human dignity, subsidiarity, solidarity, and the common good. Let me give you a taste of how we make sense of La La Land.
Take the case of RussiaGate. The basic claim, as framed and portrayed in media, is the Russians hacked the US elections that set the results in favor of the current US president, who himself, has been accused of being a kind of Manchurian candidate for the Russians. But what exactly do they mean by directed hacks to influence US elections? “Directed hacks” means cyberattacks on the Democratic National Committee, specifically emails from John Podesta, campaign chairman of the candidate who lost, which were published in Wikileaks. And what exactly did these emails contain? A lot; but for the purpose of illustrating the absurdity of media’s focus, I chose the following: admissions of rebel war crimes, special ops trainers inside Libya from nearly the start of protests, Al Qaeda embedded in the U.S.-backed opposition, Western nations jockeying for access to Libyan oil and getting anxious about Gaddafi’s gold and silver reserves that threaten European currency, a strategy for regime change in Syria—way before any protests against the Syrian president; and there are those questionable details about a certain Foundation. It is odd how the problematic contents of the emails, shedding light on various huge wars that cost money and dismantled countries and lives, are trumped for what we have been seeing on CNN for almost a year now.
And even before any investigation, the former US president (a Nobel Peace recipient) immediately sanctioned the Russians. Oddly, the Russian president is accused of being aggressive, and the current colorful US president is accused of being dangerous, possibly bent on starting World War III. But he is a pacifist compared to the other candidate who helped depose and execute Libya’s leader, vowed to get rid of Syria’s president, and called the Russian president a bully in numerous occasions (name-calling is not a good thing for diplomacy). Then there is the entire US Congress, which overwhelmingly voted to set additional sanctions and pressured their supposedly warmongering president to sign. Who really wants war?
Then there is the Paris Agreement, which frames its defenders as heroic lovers of environment and humanity and its detractors as greedy and uncaring capitalists.
And then there is this media “hero,” Bruce Jenner. To critique this is suicide. There is also Meryl Streep, proclaimed inspiring and brave for delivering a speech condemning the current US president and criticizing Republicans at an awards ceremony filled with full-fledged Democrats, where one was certain to earn glowing headlines and raving praise; and she was also able to successfully plug her artistic accomplishments. Brave would be to pop the bubble by delivering to an audience that needs convincing but rather, she inflated it and like a typical citizen of La La Land, basked in the magic of the surreal accolades. I can go on with a critique of Netflix and HBO (which have made pornography a staple; together with whining and self-pity). I mean, Game of Thrones is currently the most popular show on earth—or at least it is what our current Western media are framing.
I too have fallen into “a euphoric dreamlike mental state detached from the harsher realities of life,” where one “isn’t aware of what is really happening.” I’ve had my own struggles with my own obliviousness and narcissism, in chasing unicorn ideas, and faulty reasoning; that which I created in my head, where mistakes were/are made and intellectual humility is often neglected. This is my bout with La La Land.
My first article was published in Media Asia in 2004. I was never particularly interested in PR [public relations]. I was always a loner and did not like parties, events, and crowds. But I loved to write. At an early age, while other children were buying tickets to see this Hispanic boy band and getting haircuts after watching a certain actress in a popular movie, I was reading Newsweek, watching CNN (when it was relatively unknown in the Philippines), and regularly catching the The National Geographic Show and David Attenborough during the days of pre-cable and internet Philippines. I used to be CNN’s biggest fan in the country and might have been a crazy animal lover (I still love them—animals, that is; not CNN; but I am no longer crazy). I was always interested in journalism, which brought me to always be part of the school paper. And PR is said to be the cousin of journalism. PR is also said to be the parent (some say cousin) of IMC [integrated marketing communications]. But I am just attempting to piece a story here. Truth is, the article I wrote was based on a paper I had written for a class in U.P. during my post-graduate studies. I was made to investigate Ramon Magsaysay. But this is not a paper I am happy with. But I bring it up today to show how research and the pursuit of truth is a process, and hopefully, a process of evolution and development, because I cringed when I read it eight years ago, and I would probably cringe more if I read it today. Wisdom comes with age.
As soon as I finished my PhD, our then director and now dean, Dr. Jerry Kliatchko, encouraged me to write a version for publication in a peer-reviewed academic journal. By the time I was doing my postdoctoral studies, I came to realize PR was not about going to events and parties. PR was primarily writing, and most of those I interviewed for my dissertation were exceptional writers. One of them was even published in the second top ranking journal in PR—Public Relations Review: A Global Journal of Research and Comment. Imagine a practitioner in La La Land published here! I was impressed. And many of those I interviewed were well read and spoke very well but low-key, quiet, and unassuming, something one wouldn’t expect from citizens of La La Land: the image industry, which deals in ‘show’—the business of show business, as the song goes. But the business of converting my dissertation for a peer-reviewed, ISI-accredited publication was difficult and painful. In those days, there were no online systems for paper submission. It had to be done manually through snail mail. I recall submitting to four journals at the same time—something that shouldn’t be done; but naughty me did it anyway.
One by one the responses came in and they were all rejects. They were harsh. After three rejects, I had a silent existential crisis. I decided I would never submit an article again. But the Good Lord heard me and thought I might not be strong enough to overcome this hurdle. He gave me a nudge; and it was in the form of response #4: “We are happy to inform you….” While there were revisions to be made, it was nonetheless a wonderful “yes.” I immediately abandoned my ‘self-pity’ and ‘woe is me, I am not good enough’ response to the first three rejects. Best of all, my article was accepted by the top two peer-reviewed journal in PR.
It happened in 2007. I did not tell anyone my article had been accepted until it saw print. I was in my cubicle and Dr. Jerry Kliatchko came up to me looking quite excited and said, “Congratulations!” “Congratulations, for what?” I thought. And I think he realized I didn’t know, as he handed me a copy of the PR Review. He was surprised. I was surprised. I can’t say it didn’t feel great, especially after three rejects. To this day, only four Filipinos have been published in this journal: the first was that PR practitioner I interviewed, then myself, a Filipino professor based in the US, and another in Melbourne.
Was I curious? Did I want to gain wisdom by knowing the truth? Was I setting out to pursue the truth for the sheer love of knowing? Not really. I primarily wanted to be published. But the road to getting published is not an upward climb. My paper on CSR [corporate social responsibility] took a heavy beating as it did the rounds of journals—reject after reject, revision after revision. It was a lot of work. I initially submitted to the top journals in class A and went down the ranks as I got those letters of rejection. If class A is exhausted, then I go to class B; and you go on and on until you get a publication to notice and finally accept. In 2009, I was published in Asian Business & Management (ABM). It was not my first choice but it was at least still ISI-accredited. It was not just about wanting to be published. More than a decade after my college graduation, having finished my Ph.D., having worked in an advertising agency for almost a year, and having taught over 10 batches (and having three children in between), one is less contrived in the effort to understand and make sense.
I was in IESE presenting a marketing paper (with my then eight-year-old—people wondered how she managed to sit quietly through it all) when I got an email from Dr. Zen Udani, who had previously read my CSR article in ABM. His field of interest is management and leadership and he was working on a paper on servant leadership. Cory Aquino had just passed away and according to Zen, there was a lot of interest in the late president in his field. He asked if I wanted to collaborate since like myself, his slant was also in the field of business ethics. I was not particularly interested, even if I was in the first and second EDSA [revolutions] and both Aquinos and Cojuangcos were family friends. My lack of excitement was due to two things: (1) Philippine politics did not interest me and even at an early age, I always preferred to tackle things far from home; and (2) the late president did not always make the best decisions. But there was one thought lingering in my head—that through all her mistakes, she seemed to always come through as a strong and positive symbol for human dignity, freedom, solidarity, subsidiarity, and the common good. And this was specifically manifest during her dramatic and moving funeral, which was like EDSA again. This is significant because studies show how close to impossible it is for any mass or collective to assemble in such huge numbers and maintain the assembly. (Those we see on CNN that happen in the Mideast have questionable origins and are anything but natural). Semiotics, it is called in the field of communication theory; and the late female president was a significant case study for this science of signs and symbols—the same science much of advertising and the entire image industry is premised. Cory Aquino gave the country a cultured narrative, and narratives and culture are important.
It was a grueling and bloody process of submission, rejection, revision, and submission going from one journal to the next. Miraculously, we were published in the journal we had originally intended. Persistence does pay. In 2013, we were published in the Journal of Business Ethics, one of the top business and management journals. It is also the top business ethics journal—only sometimes deposed by Business Ethics Quarterly. We looked at Cory Aquino’s life and presidency and the evidences they yield for the usefulness and soundness of servant leadership as an alternative for business in its crisis of leadership.
Simultaneously with our servant leadership paper, Zen and I were working on a CSR article, “Bringing Back the Essence of the “S” and “R” to CSR: Understanding the Limitations of the Merchant Trade and the White Man’s Burden,” which was accepted for publication in the same year by the same journal. Our main contention, as the title declares, is that CSR has generally departed from the true notion of “social” and “responsibility.” We proposed a corporation focus on profit-efficiency versus maximizing profit. The corporation was created as an instrument of economic efficiency. If the creation of wealth is taking a toll on other aspects of the business, the efficiency aspect is compromised. Profit efficiency is figuring out how much profit to achieve in the context of maintaining a business practice as a community of persons seeking efficiency in trade and ensuring human flourishing. Thus, cSR. The “S” and “R” are bigger to stress the significance of keeping the essence of social responsibility.
I also read other things to widen my perspective. For instance, I read the book of Theodore Herzl, the inventor of Zionism and propagator of the idea of having a Jewish state. My position was always critical of Israel. Prior to this, however, I was critical of the Arab world. But reading allowed me to weed out the chaff from the wheat.
It took quite a bit of rejects before our paper on management spirituality was finally accepted and published. “The utility of virtue: management spirituality and ethics for a secular business world” was published in the Asian Journal of Business Ethics in 2016—a whole three years after we started the project. At this point, I was no longer hurt by a reject because if you cast aside your pride and keep to your goal of simply wanting to pursue what is true and do it well, then you will hear out those reviews and you will read a lot more, and you will ponder and reflect and refine your expression. And by the time you get to journal number 100 (not that we were ever this ‘fortunate’), it would have been such a greatly improved and better-written paper. Sans one glaring typographical error, I am fairly satisfied with this because I finally reconciled my issues with virtue and utilitarianism: there is utility in virtue and there is virtue in utility. One gains skill in achieving virtue as one grows in virtue in the effort to acquire skill. But with every new project, one hopes to improve and refine those less-than-ideal perspectives. This brings me to our latest and current project.
Our latest paper, “Humanistic Marketing,” was just rejected. I am not sad, but I am exhausted because the amount of work one places in such a project is enormous. After a reject, I honestly go through a period of prepping myself up for embracing and tackling it again. And I usually spend this time reading articles from the Mises Institute, the Foundation for Economic Education, Sputnik International, and the personal page of lewrockwell.com, founder of the Mises Institute. Or I watch difficult-to-find documentaries such as “Ukraine on Fire” (the false propaganda version—”Winter on Fire”—can be streamed on Netflix), “The Putin Interviews” (PBS just made a version demonizing the leader and country in response), and my new interest—the blockchain. And I have learned quite a bit from these non-traditional sources for academia. Yes, I have found the scholarly also outside the world of journals; and I discovered these sites by actively searching Google. I was introduced to the world of the libertarian and it was in their pages I discovered I was a capitalist after all, and the capitalism I was critiquing was not capitalism. What I thought was capitalism was socialism parading as capitalism. Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party are really opposite sides of the same coin, and it is the exact same coin, indeed as you can see here. Their labels are Democratic and Republican; Liberal and Conservative—both traditionally and essentially wonderful concepts rooted in the Christian tradition of Western civilization; but they have been corrupted, more aptly tagged as neoliberalism and neoconservatism—which are anything but liberal and conservative. So what is a libertarian?
A libertarian, according to the Foundation for Economic Education, is “one who holds to the doctrine of free will… rejects the idea of using violence or the threat of violence to impose his will or viewpoint upon any peaceful person…. He is one who wants to be governed far less than he is today… [he believes] persons who make wise choices are entitled to enjoy the fruits of their wisdom, and persons who make unwise choices have no right to demand government reimburse them for their folly… He believes in the free and competitive market… doesn’t advocate violent rebellion against prevailing governments—except as a last resort before the concentration camps.” Sounds like the Thomistic definition of freedom—“the power to do what you ought yourself”— and Catholic Social Teaching with the principles of freedom, human dignity, subsidiarity, solidarity, and the common good. I realized how socialist our world is and how much of this socialism is celebrated in and by the image industry—in La La Land.
The Left will try to label whatever economic breakdown and social disaster as—indeed, the ‘ultimate’—‘crisis of capitalism’ and propose to ‘cure’ it with yet another version of socialism. This quote from Frederic Bastiat is enlightening:
If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?
As is this from Ludwig von Mises: “If one rejects laissez faire on account of man’s fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action.”
Thus, marketing is already humanistic. Robert Higgs reminds us of the great significance of our individualism in this quote: “If we are to regain our liberties, we must reassert our responsibilities for ourselves, accepting the consequences of our own actions without appealing to the government for salvation.”
And marketing, the commercial enterprise, and trade help to keep us human—rational and social. St. Thomas’ definition of freedom rings in my head.
The humanistic quest was always central to economics and marketing. Adam Smith and Milton Friedman never advocated the pursuit of one’s interest to the detriment of individuals and society. Self-interest is not the same as selfishness. I made my amends with Adam when I visited Edinburgh last year. But then I recently came across this article, which suggests capitalism was not originally Smith, Protestant, and Anglo. It originated in Italy and is/was initially Catholic. But that is another discussion.
My final thoughts:
- La La Land encourages us to read and think in slogans and labels, which discourage thinking and thus, knowing. Words such as “fake news,” “conspiracy theory,” “terrorism,” “Holocaust/ climate change denier,” and “axis of evil” discourage us from attempting to find out. Oh, John McCain is a Republican, so he is definitely a good guy.
- Slogans and labels are not always just words. The most obvious examples come from advertising and branding: (a) Disney = wholesome family entertainment (but vigilant mothers know this isn’t always the case); (b) Walmart = cheap (well, it really is); or (c) Apple = tech-savvy cutting-edge geek (although this perception is waning). But slogans and labels can also be entities, countries, events, and people. Take the case of the former US president Nobel Peace Prize recipient who was supposed to be the world’s answer to the previous warmonger. But data says, he dropped more bombs and spent more money on wars than any other US president.
The problem with dreams is, we are asleep.
- Then there is faction or what I call the Dan Brown Framework of communication. We have great difficulty with systems thinking—examining the linkages and interactions between components; the lack or absence of context. It is the twittering age of infographs and memes—slogans and labels—where the short and dramatic win.
- Finally, socialism seems to be inserted in almost every facet of life. La La Land might be a metaphor; like socialism, it is dramatic and dreamy. But the most loved world leader giving medals of freedom to the new ‘heroes’ is no longer a dream. And the most demonized world leader giving medals to parents with many children and proclaiming a holiday to celebrate the traditional family might sound like a dream.
We all know the previous US president as well as La La Land’s thoughts on religion and traditional values. Here is something we almost never hear in La La Land:
A further challenge (danger) for the national Russian identity is connected to the processes outside of Russia. They include foreign policy, moral and other aspects. We see that many euro-atlantic States (the West) have taken the way where they deny or reject their own roots, including their Christian roots, which form the basis of Western civilization. In these countries, the moral basis and any traditional identity are being denied; national, religious, cultural, and even gender identities are being denied or relativized. There, politics treats family with many children as equal to homosexual partnership (juridically); faith in God is equal to faith in Satan.
The excesses and exaggerations of political correctness in these countries indeed lead to serious consideration for the legitimization of parties that promote the propaganda of paedophilia. The people in many European States are actually ashamed of their religious affiliations and are indeed frightened to speak about them. Christian holidays and celebrations are abolished and “neutrally” renamed, as if one were ashamed of those Christian holidays. With his method, one hides away the deeper moral value of these celebrations.
And these countries try to force this model onto other countries, globally. I am deeply convinced that this is a direct way to the degradation and primitivization (of culture). It leads to a deeper demographic and moral crisis in the West. What can be a better evidence for the moral crisis of human society (in the West) than the loss of its reproductive function? And today, nearly all “developed” Western countries cannot survive reproductively, not even with the help of migrants.
Without the moral values that are rooted in Christianity and other world religions, without rules and moral values which have formed and been developed over millennia, people will inevitably lose their human dignity (=become brutes). And we think it is right and natural to defend and preserve these moral (Christian) values. One has to respect the right of every minority to self-determination, but at the same time, there cannot and must not be any doubt about the rights of the majority.
(Part of the address by the President of Russia Vladimir Putin at the Valdai-Forum, 19 September 2013)
And here is one of La La Land’s advocacies:
Children: Too young to choose bedtime. Old enough to choose gender.
And here is one of its fruits: The University of Minnesota has a student group with one rule: No straight white people.
It is truly difficult to snap out of this “euphoric dreamlike mental state detached from the harsher realities of life,” “not aware of what is really happening.” I try to grow with my students in the attempt to learn the ropes of sense-making with these: Understanding Media, Communication Theory, and Communication Research; the historical context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the reality of President Trump and President Putin; and why Iron Man, Superman, Batman, and Ellen Degeneres are not super or heroes in the framework of the Christian tradition (or any logical framework for that matter). Why pornography just isn’t artistic and light. And why La La Land’s true stories are almost always faction. Why shows of charity, benevolence, and partying with Hollywood, and plain visibility and noise do not make one charitable, heroic, or a disciple of wisdom, truth, and the humanistic tradition.
I can’t say I am not entertained by La La Land. I grew up with with her/him/her—whichever pronoun La La Land suddenly declares correct. But I have also chosen to want to grow. So like everyone else, I must guard against falling back in and placing myself in another bubble of that dreamlike euphoria, which in my case is the La La Land of academia—being locked in my own thoughts, out of touch with reality.
And so I continue to think, reflect, ponder, and pursue the truth about the most powerful and captivating industry on earth; and I am having fun in the process—reading, watching, and experiencing La La Land.
This speech was delivered on August 17, 2017 in celebration of the 22nd University Day. The University Day Lecture, traditionally held every August 15, was moved two days later to give way to the Golden Jubilee program.
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