Dethroning Popstar Princess Sarah Geronimo

ABSTRACT

“Sarah Geronimo's rise to fame is one of the most celebrated Cinderella stories in show business. Her modern day rags-to-riches tale continuously inspires thousands to dare to dream, to work hard, to keep believing, and to never say never.” (sarahgeronimo.com, 2009)

Mañalac, E. (2011). Dethroning Popstar Princess Sarah Geronimo: Issues on the Narratology of Success, False-consciousness and the Culture Industry, Unpublished Undergrad Thesis, University of the Philippines College of Mass Communication.

My thesis is about Sarah Geronimo and the formula of the narratology of success. I study Sarah Geronimo both as a broadcast and cultural text. I attempt to explain how the narrative structures of her shows create a false sense of success by employing rags to riches story thus rationalizing poverty as an inevitable condition that individuals have to deal with. It creates a notion that only individuals who give into the capitalist system can attain “success.” I explain how her shows favor the existing capitalist system ideology and certain social classes in society.

I argue in this study that celebrities, like Sarah Geronimo, are cultural texts that claim to represent the real conditions of the masses through their personal life stories and the specific roles they portray in order to justify the existing notions on imagined success and poverty. However, in reality, celebrities and the “panggitnang uri ng pamantayan ng tagumpay” (Tolentino, p. 2: 2000) they represent are mere attempts to habituate their audience to the labor of the capitalist economy – as if it is an inescapable part of life.

My analysis focuses on two of her teleseryes such as Bituing Walang Ningning and Pangarap na Bituin. I claim in this study that the narratives are part of the media industry that merely amuses its audience into believing that their dreams can be attained. However, in reality, it only conceals class struggles and defers success of the working class and other marginalized sectors of society In the end, I explain how the narratology of Sarah Geronimo’s success stories is part of the bigger process of the capitalist system that creates celebrities, shows and other commodities, and maintain the dominant order of things.

Keywords: Sarah Geronimo, narratology of success, ideology, false-consciousness, culture industry

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