Sanchez / Si Judy Ann Santos at ang Wika ng Teleserye 344 SI JUDY ANN SANTOS AT ANG WIKA NG TELESERYE Louie Jon A. Sánchez Ateneo de Manila University
[email protected] Abstract The actress Judy Ann Santos boasts of an illustrious and sterling career in Philippine show business, and is widely considered the “queen” of the teleserye, the Filipino soap opera. In the manner of Barthes, this paper explores this queenship, so-called, by way of traversing through Santos’ acting history, which may be read as having founded the language, the grammar of the said televisual dramatic genre. The paper will focus, primarily, on her oeuvre of soap operas, and would consequently delve into her other interventions in film, illustrating not only how her career was shaped by the dramatic genre, pre- and post- EDSA Revolution, but also how she actually interrogated and negotiated with what may be deemed demarcations of her own formulation of the genre. In the end, the paper seeks to carry out the task of generically explicating the teleserye by way of Santos’s oeuvre, establishing a sort of authorship through intermedium perpetration, as well as responding on her own so-called “anxiety of influence” with the esteemed actress Nora Aunor. Keywords aura; iconology; ordinariness; rules of assemblage; teleseries About the Author Louie Jon A. Sánchez is the author of two poetry collections in Filipino, At Sa Tahanan ng Alabok (Manila: U of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 2010), a finalist in the Madrigal Gonzales Prize for Best First Book, and Kung Saan sa Katawan (Manila: U of Santo To- mas Publishing House, 2013), a finalist in the National Book Awards Best Poetry Book in Filipino category; and a book of creative nonfiction, Pagkahaba-haba Man ng Prusisyon: Mga Pagtatapat at Pahayag ng Pananampalataya (Quezon City: U of the Philippines P, forthcoming).