ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Graham Murdock's discussion of "cultural citizenship" to frame Filipinos' protests in fall 2007 as a plea for better representation in the US cultural sphere. In fall 2007, two popular US television programs, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Comedy Central and Desperate Housewives on ABC, each aired an episode that contained a punch line about Filipinos. The chapter argues that forced fandom can serve as a useful concept beyond Filipino or Filipino American studies. The conditions were set for Filipinos' forced fandom of US media in 1898, when the United States annexed the Philippine Islands after defeating the Spanish Empire in the Spanish-American War, and then suppressed the Filipino insurgency of 1899-1902. Through the American colonial period, and after 1946, when the US granted the Philippines independence, the Philippines has been an important source of labor and raw materials for the US, and Filipinos in turn have been targeted as consumers for US exports.
