K Horror

Sen. Jinggoy Estrada must have awakened one fine day and decided that the best way to get the local entertainment industry back on its feet, was to ban movies and television shows from South Korea.

And so he gets into his car, motors to the Senate, and says so in open session.

Another former actor-turned-politician, Sen. Robin Padilla, seconded the motion (so to speak) and — trying to be the cure — wondered why Korean shows lorded it over the local airwaves when Filipino actors were "more handsome" than their counterparts from Seoul. And then a third, then matinee idol Richard Gomez, now a Mayor, said a ban would be too harsh; a limit would be more pragmatic.

Estrada was jeered into swallowing his words, Padilla was scoffed at, but Gomez may have hit the nail on the head, since the film industry that the local impresario's envy — that of South Korea — came to be world-class because there was a time when Seoul imposed strict quotas on the showing of foreign films.

This boosted their movie production so much, in both quantity and quality that today, the so-called "Hallyuwood" (the colloquial term for the South Korean entertainment industry), is one of the three major hubs of international filmmaking, the other two being the Indian "Bollywood" and, of course, Hollywood. Its film outputs such as "Host," "Train to Busan" and "Parasite" (which recently won an Oscar Best Foreign Picture Award), have made an indelible impact on world cinema. And with a population less than half of ours, South Korea has roughly twice the number of movie theaters.

The aforementioned quotas (since lifted), government incentives, and an industry that values stringent standards and rigid training for its talents have resulted in the emergence of the phenomenon called K-Pop and K-Drama, a multi-billion dollar enterprise that not only brings in foreign revenues but allows South Korea to export its culture worldwide. Many Korean artists are now as well-known internationally as their American counterparts. Acts such as Wondergirls, Momoland, and BTS have invaded Billboard Magazine's Hot 100 charts. A funny-looking singer, Psy, was the first person to have garnered a BILLION views on YouTube for his dance hit Oppa Gangnam Style. Korean fashion is imitated and given homage everywhere. The rise of K-Pop, K-Drama, and K-Cinema around the world is truly unstoppable.

Where does that leave our local movie industry? In a word: camote. And I can almost hear my mother Belen adding, "may ulalo pa." Once the darling of Asian cinema for edgy, innovative movies such as "Genghis Khan", "Oro, Plata, Mata", "Orapronobis" and "Anak Dalita", and with our actresses such as Barbara Luna breaking into Hollywood in the '70s, we have been reduced to also-rans.

To be sure, there is no shortage of talented production people: Directors, writers and cinematographers. The problem is one of content. As the big studios jostle with each other for a share of the limited domestic market, there ensues a mad rush for what is profitable, at the expense of excellence. "Stars" are manufactured ala production line, with one seemingly born every minute, made to go out onto the stage with little or no training. Television series and movies stick to the formulaic and predictable, pandering to the least common denominator.

We thus have a movie and television industry that has stagnated — nay, fossilized! Sadly, there is no quick fix. A good start, however, would be to drastically increase government incentives, hold film festivals that would showcase the best that local producers can make instead of being fixated on gross revenues, and educate the public by encouraging those who make quality movies to keep on producing them. Otherwise, we will forever be stuck in the Sargasso Sea of slapstick, trite romances, and banal horror movies. Enough to make one scream, K HORROR!