Mainstream Care Work Films: A New Filipino Genre as an Assertion of Contemporary History

Abstract

The paper proposes a postmodernist framework that can be used to analyze the development not only of care work films that emerged from the Filipinos’ role in the global care work chain and their increasing power to sustain the Philippine film industry but also of other social phenomena that arise from mass production and mass consumption dynamics. The framework derives from theories of Bakhtinian “dialogism,” Foucauldian “discourse,” Gramscian “hegemony,” and Gladwellian “tipping point” and an assertion that care work films, taken as a “new” film genre, is a valid starting point in the study of contemporary Filipino history shaped by globalization.