Paet-Culture: Representation of Paete as Carving Capital of the Philippines in Select Cultural Forms

Abstract

The Municipality of Paete has been declared the Carving Capital of the Philippines by former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in 2005. The film Carving Thy Faith (2018) by Hiyas Baldemor Bagabaldo, the Paete Ukit-Taka Festival by the Municipality of Paete, and the town tour by the Paete Municipal Tourism Office are representations of Paete as Carving Capital in cultural forms. The study aimed to answer how Paete’s culture and carving industry represented in these select cultural forms. In order to discuss Paete’s representation in select cultural forms from a documentary, a festival, and a town tour, this study analyzed the film Carving Thy Faith (2018), the Paete Ukit-Taka Festival, and the Paete Tourism Office town tour to find and ensure the readers, tourists, and the general public an approach to gain an understanding about the culture and products of Paete. Cultural representation is a concept by Stuart Hall (1997). Representation connects meaning and language to culture. The study is a qualitative research that assessed Paete’s representation to ensure the public an approach to gain an understanding about the town’s culture by focus interviews, archival research, film analysis, and participant observation. The three cultural forms embody Paete’s rich cultural culture as a particular way of life, the town’s culture as expression, and cultural analysis as a method of reconstructing a way of life to establish a general perspective of the culture and represent itself to others. Paete is the Carving Capital because of the efforts of its people, their talent, and tradition that shapes the town’s identity.