Aping the Filipino Image

Abstract

Early American visual culture has played a substantial role in advancing American Imperialism in the early 1900s. Using publication as an instrument of expansionism, America’s distribution of visual images depicting its conquered nations, has resulted in consequences that have perpetually categorized its once-dominated territories as inferior. The Philippines reveal the consequences of this classification. Seized by the United States in 1899, the Philippines was repeatedly a subject of American print culture. Primarily, editorial cartoons were used to illustrate recurring images of Filipinos to justify its annexation. Employing illusive and sensational tropes, these cartoons were widely distributed through magazines and periodicals, informing the American population of debasing assumptions to characterize the Filipino individual. As a result, the Philippines gained false attributions and stereotypes brought upon by their erroneous portrayal in early American media. This research argues that the deceptive representation of the Philippines in early American visual culture, has aided in creating false Filipino stereotypes, hence, sustaining the nation in the periphery. Visual codings used in editorial cartoons repeatedly exemplified the Filipino character as incompetent and inferior. Filtration of Filipino representation is, likewise, apparent. By exaggerating damaging visual tropes that painted the Filipino individual as primitive and savage, and eliminating its progressive and modern characteristics, editorial cartoons helped reinforce the supposed ‘benevolent assimilation’ America used in defending its colonialism. Such reinforcement produced lasting consequences that not only perpetuated false Filipino stereotypes in the global platform, but also encouraged the Philippines’ inadvertent participation to cultural imperialism in present society.