I have lots of opinions. Lots of them. It’s embedded in my gay genes. That is why I love critiquing and analyzing film, TV, media, and all that informs culture.
Culture is a shared system of customs, arts, and beliefs of an era of time, a physical geographical location, or a particular social group — or community.
Culture and community go hand in hand. In a post-pandemic world, the importance of community has become stronger — and in some cases, it is eroding.
Since my days as the president of the Philippine Student Association at Texas A&M University, community has been significant in my life professionally and personally. Even as a child, my dad was a community leader. I was often thrown into participating (sometimes as an unwilling, difficult teenager) in Filipino community events while living in San Antonio.
Over the years, I have gained a lot of knowledge and experiences from working within the AAPI community, the LGBTQ+ community, the arts & culture community, the Hollywood community, and the local community in which I simply live my best life.
I have experienced a lot of joy, unity, and progress within the communities I live in, and I have also experienced a fair share of disappointment, frustrations, and shadiness.
With the new DIASPORA column, Community, Interrupted, I serve up a monthly dispatch from my experiences, observations, and analysis of all that is happening in my communities as well as other communities that drive change to help better society and the world at large.
Community, Interrupted includes, but is not limited to, articles, essays, interviews, and thoughts about:
- Who is actually doing the work — and who isn’t.
- The gap between what community is supposed to be and what it becomes when organizations fail, leaders disappoint, or outside systems intervene.
- Unpacking and interrogating cultural moments and people in history and contextualizing it within the present landscape of representation and power.
DIASPORA and Community, Interrupted aren’t interested in optics, performative advocacy, or virtue signaling — only action.
With an engine that runs on accountability journalism, Community, Interrupted surveys the culture that builds the society we live in. It aims to celebrate progress and hold people responsible for their actions — including myself.
As the value of cultural criticism continues to be eclipsed by promotional content, marketing is constantly prioritized over journalism. This has been seen with the decline of critics from major journalistic publications while studios put more emphasis on influencer “content”.
Understandably, influencers in the entertainment space with millions of followers receive generous access to premieres, interviews with A-list talent, and all the perks. While major Hollywood trade and legacy publications maintain their hold on access, smaller independent publications with veteran journalists are left with crumbs and little to no space to do their job.
All of this makes sense in terms of business, but it dilutes the journalistic integrity that is often attached to the film and TV industry. Some may argue there wasn’t much there to begin with.
The disappearance of critics reinforces the perception that they are disposable and unimportant, which is why culture sections in newsrooms get the chop first — but culture is community and vice versa.
When culture is suppressed, community suffers. There’s no growth or progress. Local artists and voices remain unheard, and a community’s point of view starts to curdle. Smaller, local publications are taken over by the algorithm, and culture becomes homogenous, and by association, the community becomes atomized.
As they say, “everybody is a critic”— but not everybody has an understanding of what good criticism is. There’s an assumption that criticism is just personal judgment — but if that were the case, I would hate 99% of everything I watch.
Criticism may partially stem from a place of personal judgment, but it is balanced with a thorough analysis of a film, novel, album, or community. Good criticism leaves the door open for debate.
Community, Interrupted explores the intersection of culture and community through an unapologetic lens but with good intention. Sure, I might have some strong (shady) opinions about something, but communities can’t grow without criticism to help all of us become better. Community, Interrupted is a cultural diagnosis of the time.
