Celebrity politics and televisual melodrama in the age of Duterte

Rodrigo Duterte's election to President of the Philippines in 2016 has attracted tremendous international attention. His controversial character, apparent disregard for protocol, and the wave of deaths in his "war on drugs," including extra-judicial killings, have garnered extensive coverage in the global media-and rightly so. But to understand Duterte's success, it is important to extend analysis of Duterte as a political figure, to also explore the nature of his relationship to members of the public who voted for him (Curato 2016). In this chapter, I focus in particular on the role of media and celebrity in the national electoral machine, and the entertainment media's constitutive role in the cultural context that has enabled his success. I argue that Duterte is a beneficiary of a political culture where policies and processes have been less electorally effective than the glitz of showbusiness and success of personal charisma. His ongoing political popularity rests not only on his deployment of media in his own political performance, but also more broadly on the convergence of entertainment and politics as it is experienced in the Philippines (and in other parts of the world) through emotional connections with audiences who are also publics.