IT'S our fervent hope that the escalating controversy over the staging of the "Miss Saigon" musical in Manila will persuade Filipinos everywhere to admit to, confront and decisively deal with the important but often unadmitted issue of our colonial mentality, or preference for anything foreign to local culture and products.

The problem is not "Miss Saigon" itself, but the pervasive mind set that it represents, an attitudinal bias we've inherited from our colonizers. To show how huge the problem is, let's cite instances in entertainment where this bias is palpable:

On Philippine radio, many deejays speak with an American twang and even sport American names. When asked why they have created ersatz "imported" personas for themselves, the deejays say this is what their listeners want. Why? Because they want to feel like they're in the States, listening to an American station playing the latest Stateside hits in music. Really, now…

On TV, more hosts are now speaking English with the same American twang. This is due to the increased influx of Fil-Americans, Fil-Canadians, Fil-Australians and Fil-Germans who can't speak Tagalog well. Since they come from more "advanced" countries, they feel free to subject us to their kind of English. And it takes them years to learn even basic Tagalog because they simply think it isn't all that important (it is).

Despite the waves of nationalism that have periodically swept through the country, most of our TV-movie stars are Caucasian or tisoy types. This is because we have patterned our movie industry on our colonizers' Hollywood, and we naturally have been led to believe that the whiter, taller and more aquiline-nosed a local star is, the better.

When Nora Aunor challenged the system with her unexpected popularity, the preference for tisoy types diminished, and other Pinoy-looking stars were able to establish themselves. But the incipient trend soon ground to a halt, and we're back to the Caucasian types again.

You see this in the current popularity of young tisoy stars who are mass-produced to look like veritable clones of each other by our film companies and the talent centers of our leading TV channels.

In the recording field, many new albums feature revivals of foreign hits. Even proudly Filipino bands have to pay obeisance if not allegiance to at least a couple of imported hits, just to keep the coño kids and ersatz Amboys out there slap-happy.

In live performance, it's more of the same. In addition, the country has become a happy hunting ground for visiting foreign artists who are promoting their latest albums.

It's gotten so bad that local artists complain that they can't get enough backing for their shows because most of their potential sponsors have already spent the bulk of their promo budget on the more popular foreign acts.

Now that the Philippine population has mushroomed to more than 75 million people, the problem has become even more pronounced. More people means more potential buyers of albums, so even big-name foreign acts find the Philippines hard to pass up on their periodic promo tours. The bigger the foreign star, the more daunting the competition he provides, so local artists find it even harder to get their rightful share of the entertainment pie.

In theater, Filipino plays have made an inroad, but the market for English-language theater remains large. More to the point, it has more money to spend, so actors in Filipino productions tend to get paid less than actors in English plays.

Particularly galling is the explanation given by some English-language theater artists for their not doing plays in Filipino: they say that they've looked, they've tried, but they just haven't been able to find a Tagalog script worth doing!

Fact is, we do have outstanding plays in Tagalog, but some English-language theater artists' colonial mentality makes it difficult for them to appreciate their virtues-and, more to the point, to be able to do justice to them.

On television, many shows are done in Tagalog, but some of their formats are lifted from popular American or Latin American programs-the Filipino telenovela, the Filipino "Baywatch," that sort of thing.

As you can see, our colonial mentality is everywhere, more than 50 years after we were "awarded" our "independence" by our last colonizer. It's important that we realize the pervasiveness of the problem because it has severely hampered the development of our homegrown performing arts and media, so that they can truly reflect our national aspirations and unique cultural essence.