Your (Black)Face Sounds Familiar: A Reception Analysis on the Portrayal of Blackface on Your Face Sounds Familiar

Your (Black)Face Sounds Familiar: A Reception Analysis on the Portrayal of Blackface on Your Face Sounds Familiar

ABSTRACT Famatiga, F.C. (2018). Your (Black)Face Sounds Familiar: A Reception Analysis on the Portrayal of Black Artists on Your Face Sounds Familiar. (Unpublished Undergraduate Thesis). College of Mass Communication, University of the Philippines Diliman, Quezon City.

Black face has long been deemed as racist, offensive, and unacceptable in modern society. However, it seems as if Filipino producers and the Filipino audience don’t recognize it as such as it had been featured week after week on ABS-CBN’s singing and impersonation program, Your Face Sounds Familiar (Escobar, 2017). This thesis analyzes how the portrayal of black artists on Your Face Sounds Familiar is understood by the Filipino audience through an audience reception analysis. It uses Joanne Rondilla’s (2012) concept of skin color hierarchy to discuss the relationship of the Philippines’ colonial past and how dark skin has been viewed in Filipino culture, and Kim Schrøder’s (2000) multidimensional model of mass media reception as a guide to surface how 10 Filipinos of various backgrounds who have watched episodes of Your Face Sounds Familiar understand the depiction of African-American artists on the show, and explain why these Filipino viewers see this representation of black skin as such.

Keywords: Your Face Sounds Familiar, blackface, reception analysis, skin color hierarchy, Filipino culture, dark skin

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