This Geek Speaks: Do Philippine Television and Film Even Have a Future?!?

by Marga Manlapig on Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 2:13pm

I currently have the first two episodes and snippets of later episodes of Shameless on my iPod. If you've been reading Puck and Ginger, I referenced a sequence from this iconic British television series in the final chapters of the novel.

It's gritty, no-nonsense, all-balls-out, profane, and brutally realistic, as creator Paul Abbott meant it to be a reflection of his own working-class childhood in Manchester. If you're the prudish sort, it will certainly not be your cup of tea. If you're one of those culturally-illiterate hacks who enjoys Filipino soap operas (or what passes for soap operas in this godforsaken nation) and those brain-cell-killing shows that try to pass themselves off as sitcoms, this will probably find you quailing in your living room couch, shocked as you will be at the bare-bones sex, lies, and alcohol promenading on your small-screen. However, if you're like me - which is to say you read Lady Chatterley's Lover, James Joyce's Ulysses, and several Harold Robbins novels as a Roman Catholic teenager without any of them tarnishing your core beliefs and values - then you will thoroughly appreciate what a social drama Shameless is. You see the characters for what they are: real people in real situations coming up with real solutions - or compounding the whole bloody mess with equally real blunders. Hey, they may be fictional but they could be people you actually know! They're human, damn it!

Which is more, alas, than I can say for anything that's currently on Philippine television. The Philippines is probably the only country in the world where street urchins in telenovelas sound every bit as well-brought up as the kids from gated communities. Filipino movies feature handsome actors with Castillian features playing salt-ofthe-earth characters like jeepney or tricycle drivers, mestiza actresses playing fresh-off-the-boat household helpers, chubby kids as half-starved beggars - where, dare I ask, is the realism in that?!

And then there's all the slapping, hitting, bullying, eyebrow-raising, and what not involved in virtually every soap opera produced since the deaths of the great Lino Brocka and Ismael Bernal. Whenever the female lead is slapped around by the villainess of the piece, I feel like stepping into the television screen to beat the sh*t out of the villainess. But don't think I'd come to the aid of the fallen heroine: no, sir - if that helpless little mouseburger

can't defend herself, then - by gum! - no one should! (Damn it, kid; you're in a gods-damned kitchen! Fight back with a rolling pin or a meat mallet - and what the hell is the use of all those knives over there?!)

Even as I wince at the boo-hoo-hoos of local heroines, I can't help but look back at the female leads of many foreign soaps and sitcoms. They're strong, even fiercely independent. They may be browbeaten at times, but this doesn't mean that they won't grab the first heavy object that comes to hand and defend themselves! Classic case in point: Shameless's Fiona Gallagher (played by Anne-Marie Duff) is patronized by her boyfriend in a rather cutting manner. After a long day of playing mom to her rowdy siblings and deadbeat dad, you'd think she'd start crying the second her boy ticks her off for no reason. No, she takes fire and refuses to take any lip from the wee upstart and sucker-punches him to the floor. She then throws him out of their council-house, yells at him to never come back, and goes on with her job and house chores as if nothing happened. It is only when Fiona knows she's alone and in the privacy of her own room that she dissolves into tears. That is a right and proper heroine: you give as good as you get, you show the bastards no mercy, and only show your feelings when you're alone.

Filipino films and television, in my personal opinion, seem to consist of the following hackneyed cliches:

Poor boy / poor girl meets rich girl / rich boy, they fall in love, try to beat the odds, and end up together in the end;

Poor boy from the skids goes on a bender, turns criminal, utters the fatal, albeit common, words, "Hindi ako pahuhuli nang buhay!" (You'll never take me alive, copper!), and either gets away with murder or gets killed in a blaze of glory;

A bunch of teens and twenty-somethings find themselves in a scary old house in the middle of the boondocks and are killed off one by one by a vengeful maligno (I swear to God that it was more original when Direk Peque Gallaga and Direk Lore Reyes were still at the helm. Now that the amateurs have taken over, it's all stock...);

A poor kid finds a mythical object that gives him/her superpowers, discovers that he/she is the heir to a magical kingdom, and has to protect Manila from evil superbeings. (Sorry, Angel. Ate Vi is still the standard when it comes to saying, "Ding, ang bato!");

Two girls are switched at birth - one grows up in a priveleged environment and becomes a regular bitch while the other grows up poor but looks every inch the good princess. (Alternative scenario: twin boys are put up for adoption. One lives an upright life, the other one thrives in the shadowy underworld of criminality.);

All sorts of glorified bad behavior - bed-hopping, drugs, massive alcohol abuse, and whatnot - set against the beaches of Boracay or Puerto Princesa or Amanpulo; and

A plot ripped off some Hollywood blockbuster like Twilight or some other piece of dross.

Let me ask you: is this the sort of thing we consider quality programming? It is a disgrace, a slur upon the richness of Philippine literature and the storied past of Philippine cinema to even try to pass any of this garbage as art, let alone as quality programming!

Hate the Marcoses if you must, but I remember a time when local programming and films were good -really good. I remember sleepy afternoons when I was very young, how old black-and-white films from LVN and Sampaguita Pictures would air on either GMA or RPN after Student Canteen (which featured really good singers and dancers, not those screaming diva-types and wannabe B-boys so common these days) or Spin-a-Win. I remember going with my aunt on the set of Bata Batuta and being allowed to play with the Muppets-style puppets used on the show. I remember a time when theatre-types like Bodjie Pascua, Junix Inocian, and Isay Alvarez led children into learning on television.

While I was much too young to watch them at the time, I remember how critics both here and abroad spoke in hushed, awed tones or wrote fulsome, glowing praise of this or that Brocka or Bernal film. Later on, when I was old enough to watch them and my boss at the time asked me to do research on these two greats at the CCP, I was moved to tears by the gritty realism, the brutal honesty of films like Maynila: Sa Kuko ng Liwanag and Insiang which puts in mind Shakespeare's darker tragedies.

These days, what do we get? Willie Revillame making sport of everyone from small children to the down-and-out on whichever show he decides to do after disappearing in a fit of pique at being lambasted by all sectors of Philippine society. We get rehashed remakes of remakes that have been done before and will be done again. We get teen comedies/dramas that are so sweet, so unreal, that they can give you diabetes almost as soon as you switch on the telly. Since the death of Fernando Poe Jr., action flicks have deteriorated to the point that it's all boom-boom-boom (with regard to both sex and violence) from the get-go. We get comedies whose primary yocks come from either the toilet or from the debauched activities of the more salacious side of the LGBT crowd.

Despite efforts such as Cinemanila which laudably encourages indie filmmakers to push the envelope of their art, it is hard to fathom as to whether or not the local film and television industry can still be saved, as to whether or not they still have a future. And I speak as both a writer and a communication arts major when I say that the prospects are becoming increasingly dim.

I know that I'm probably not helping the situation by escaping into British or American cookery shows on TLC and Star World, or watching foreign flicks on DVD or watching Shameless and Law and Order UK on my iPod, but here's the thing: I did try my hand at submitting concepts to the country's bigger film outfits; my first job after college was, after all, with Viva Films. Unfortunately, I was told point-blank by the tasteless fags (and I use this

term in its most controversial and contemptible context) that they were too high-brow, definitely not masa - and anything that wasn't masa was definitely not good.

Shows you what they know. Today, these are the very people who are currently partying it up at premieres, dishing out campiness and tastelessness to a culturally-benumbed public. It would be a blessing unto this nation's collective psyches if, someday, someone would just kick the whole lot out and replace them with well-meaning people who do care about the cultural improvement of the Filipino people.

Alas, given the nature of the government we are currently under, I have serious doubts aboutthat happening, as well.

Ah, c'est la vie...