Daily TribuneFar too often one would hear complaints that Filipino TV episodes didn’t play out to their natural length but rather dragged the story out for as long as the audience was willing to sit still.
Messing with superficial joys just won't do. Superficial joys are still joys, after all.
This straightforwardly makes Senator Jinggoy Estrada's recent spoilsport thoughts about banning K-dramas personally transgressive.
Confessedly, I do indulge in the guilty pleasures of cocooning myself in the comforts of K-dramas if there was nothing else much to do except binge-watch what streaming services offer. But that's me.
To the inflation-weary public at large, however, Mr. Estrada's erstwhile private "sometimes it would cross my mind" to ban K-dramas effectively sounded absurd and farcical, and dumb.
Not least because there's a lengthy list of other pressing, in most times insurmountable, ordeals pummeling the country to pieces than all the combined ill effects of the slicker analgesic palliatives provided by K-dramas.
Still, even if it looks like another irrelevant culture war was ignited by the actor-Senator anything considered idiotic might plausibly be swallowed.
In such a case as Mr. Estrada's K-drama indictment, he qualifies it by saying he is frustrated with the Filipino public's "lack of support" for the local entertainment industry.
"I wish that the zealousness of our kababayans (countrymen) in patronizing foreign artists can be replicated to support our homegrown talents who I strongly believe are likewise world-class," he wails.
What he means to say here by his ersatz seriousness is that we'd better exercise social responsibility by helping out a presumably ossified entertainment industry by altering our viewing or listening habits. Or else what? No more actor-senators?
At any rate, Mr. Estrada's prescriptive ban is also descriptive of who really matters in this latest populist stirred-up hornet's nest — the Filipino audience.
The protagonist of the K-drama ban, therefore, is us. It's us the people whom Mr. Estrada is appealing to.
That might take some doing, however.
Particularly since, as one prominent Filipino songwriter points out, Mr. Estrada didn't extract from his fellow entertainment natives a clear commitment to artistic excellence that should charm the Filipino audience.
Sill in all honesty, high-minded artistic excellence in the entertainment business doesn't really conduce profits. Garbage can be profitable too if people so decide. Ah well.
Anyway, why do scores of Filipinos not only say hello but have tightly embraced Hallyu, Korea's equivalent to Hollywood?
What is it with Filipinos and their receptivity to the hypnotic experience of K-dramas, allowing them to merge with what they're watching?
Ironically, tracing where it all started lies with the entertainment industry itself. Particularly with local TV when it found it hard to respond to the burgeoning globalization of Asian culture.
Nearly a decade ago, giant TV networks, cut-throat competitors as they are, sensed opportunities for increasing market share lay in the direction of K-dramas.
As such, countless K-dramas were redubbed in Pilipino after the roaring success of "Endless Love 1: Autumn in My Heart" so long ago in 2003.
But once Filipinos got addicted to K-dramas many local viewers soon enough realized the narrowness of their experiences with the house style of Filipino entertainment compared to what the Korean house style was dishing out.
Far too often one would hear complaints that Filipino TV episodes didn't play out to their natural length but rather dragged out the story out for as long as the audience was willing to sit still.
Even if there were compelling stories to tell and beautiful actresses and handsome actors to look at, Filipino popular art-house style indulged the lizard brain with ineffable doses of nudity, violence, cursing, and dumb hammy comedy.
But the more compelling fact accounting for the success of K-dramas is that the Filipino self-identifies with it.
Such self-identification means Filipinos associate K-drama stories with reflecting their ways of life and cultural views, including, surprisingly, doing away with political shenanigans and corruption.
As such, perhaps the only cathartic challenge to the Filipino's addiction to K-dramas isn't to do better than the typical K-dramas but to ensure Filipinos attain the imagined community they're aspiring for.
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Email: nevqjr@yahoo.com.ph
